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SMALL THINGS 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/smallthingsOOdela 



SMALL THINGS 



BY 

MARGARET DELAND 

AUTHOR OF "the mON WOMAN," 

"the awakening OF HELENA RICHIE," 

"DB. LAVENDAB's PEOPLE," ETC. 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK 1919 



'^^t 









Copyright, 1919, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Copyright, 1919, by 
Harper & Brothers 

Copyright, 1918, by 
The Curtis Publishing Co. 

Copyright, 1918. 1919, by 
The Cbowell Publishing Co. 



^.. 



©CI.A530002 ^ 

JUN25lb- 



^/ 



TO 
LORIN DELAND 

Lover and Servant 
of his Fellows 



Mat 12th, 1919. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Facing France 1 

II Dry-eyed, Heartbroken, Laughing 27 

III Their Great Moments . 57 

IV Beads, Paris— January, 1918 89 

V Napoleon — ^and Others 124 

VI Things We Thought Were Big ...... 154 

VII "Marching Gayly" .183 

VIII "We'll Stamp the Beast Out*^ . , . . . , 211 

IX The Fellowship of Tears 236 

X "First That Which is Natural" .261 

XI "The Regal Soul" , ... 281 

XII We Decide the Kaiser's Fate . .- 305 



VU 



SMALL THINGS 



FACING FRANCE 
(1917) 

THE day we set our faces toward France the 
sky was as gray as our steamer, which was 
nosing the slimy pier, and swaying shghtly 
to the flop and slobber of the black water in the 
slip. It was a big boat, and the water seemed very 
far below the deck railing on which we were lean- 
ing to watch what was going on — the crowd on 
the dock, the stewards coming down the gang- 
plank bent double under the weight of cabin bag- 
gage, the donkey engine in the steerage, braying 
and scolding and lifting the mail sacks to drop them 
into the cavern of the hold. 

It was the usual scene of departure for Europe 
— yet it was, somehow, strangely unusual. 

1 



SMALL THINGS 

As it happened, I had always left my native land 
in sunshine — but the unusualness, now, was not in 
the chill December weather, not in the sweeping driz- 
zle of mist, and the occasional snowflakes that saun- 
tered down to rest for a crystalline moment on one's 
coat sleeve. It was not in the dimness of the dock 
sheds where the sizzling uncertainty of arc lamps 
made the shadows among the rafters seem as vast 
as Night itself. The sheds are always mysterious 
— ^with darkling streets and lanes winding between 
towering piles of freight. These things did not 
cause the sense of unusualness in the brooding gray- 
ness of the winter afternoon. It seemed to me, 
watching from the upper deck, that the difference 
was that we were all of us, under the clamor and 
interest of our departure, wordlessly aware that 
that freight, that all those bales and boxes and 
crates, were marked with some red sign: a Red 
Cross or a Red Triangle. 

And there was another thing which brought the 
difference home to us — the silence of the crowd on 
the dock. On those gay summer days, back in the 
unbelievable years of Peace, that crowd on the dock 
used to laugh and chatter, and wave college colors. 



FACING FRANCE 

and yell all sorts of friendly, merry, impertinent 
farewells ; now, it was intent and quiet ; some hand- 
kerchiefs were waved, and many small American 
flags; and there were little spurts of cheerfulness, 
but the striking thing about this crowd was its si- 
lence. And I thought some of the faces looked a lit- 
tle gray ; then I realized that the gray faces were not 
those which were coming on board the gray ship. 
They were the faces of the people who were going to 
stay at home. The faces which came down the gang- 
plank had a brightness which was all their own — 
eyes laughed, lips smiled ! — the rain and the dusk and 
the sinister color of the ship never dimmed their* 
brightness. I think this was because they were most 
of them young. 

The two girls beside me — ^my two girls who were 
going to France to work in one of the canteens of 
the Y. M. C. A. as representatives of the American 
Authors' Fund for the Relief of Wounded Soldiers 
of the Allied Nations — these two canteen workers 
are also young (just under and just over thirty), 
but they have not the startling youthfulness of some 
of the toys and girls who came so gayly from the 
good-by kisses of those men and women on the dock 



SMALL THINGS 

who were pressing silently against the great cable 
that stretched in front of the gang-plank. But I 
saw this same uplifted brightness in my girls' faces, 
too. One of them — the big one — Edith, who has the 
honest, sherry-colored eyes of a St. Bernard, 
scowled a little: 

"It will be ten days before we can get on the 
job," she fretted. (She had been straining at the 
bit for a month to be on that job!) "Why in thun- 
der doesn't this boat get a move on!" 

The other, the little one, Sylvia — ^who weighs as 
much as ninety-five pounds, and has the courage of 
a tiger and the heart of a dove— said under her 
breath, "Gracious Peter! I hope I'll make good." 
And neither of them said a word, or apparently 
had a thought, of a fat gray water-rat which might 
be waiting for them far out on the rainy sea. But 
I am sure that the quiet people watching us from 
the pier thought of the Rat — and of many other 
things of the same nature, for there were plainly 
fathers and mothers among them. ... I saw some 
pocket handkerchiefs waved, — then pressed hard 
against lips which were, I am sure, trembling. A 
moment before the gang-plank was hauled in, an 

4 



FACING FRANCE 

elderly man ran half way down its slippery slope, 
looked up with yearning eyes at the passengers 
crowding against the deck rail, waved his hat and 
ran back again. He called out something when he 
was on the dock, but the tearing roar of the whistle 
crashed over our heads and his voice was swallowed 
up in the volume of sound. . . . 

Then slowly the gray ship began to move — away 
from the pier, out through the scum of broken boxes 
and orange skins and straw bottle covers, out into 
the river, into the bay, past the guarding Liberty, 
out into the ocean and the night, toward the new 
incredible Europe, which we, astonished, inconveni- 
enced, shocked Americans hardly believe in, even 
yet ! And the sign and symbol of that unbelievable 
world is the furtive, lurking gray Rat — a thing so 
incompatible with Civilization's idea of playing the 
game of War, that of course civilized nations are 
as bewildered by its presence as one ball team would 
be if another ball team ignored the rules. . . . 

As the whistle ceased and the strip of water wid- 
ened between us and the dock, my two girls looked 
at each other and drew a great breath of relief. 

At last! 

5 



SMALL THINGS 

There had been nearly two months of uncertainty. 
The American Authors' Fund was going to send 
over two women to work in the Y. M. C. A. Canteen 
Service — but would these two girls be the women? 
When that was decided, and they had learned just 
what "canteen work" meant — a shed or room, 
"somewhere in France" where, during a ten- or even 
twelve-hour day, they should receive tired or dis- 
couraged or homesick American soldiers, sell them 
hot chocolate and sandwiches and cigarettes, play 
games with them, give them books and papers, in 
fact, "make things pleasant," — when this laborious 
prospect had been understood and joyously accepted 
as an opportunity to do their little part for their 
country — then had come days of fear that they might, 
as one of them said, "Get hung up on our passports," 
for these important documents were unaccountably 
delayed. "Why doesn't Washington get bust;?" 
Edith said, with displeasure ; "I should think, by this 
time, the Government would be able to attend to 
things." When the passports at last appeared, 
there had been hours of panic because it seemed im- 
possible to get through the crowding details of the 

6 



FACING FRANCE 

last morning on shore. "We'll never reach the dock 
in time!" some one said. 

"I bet we'll be left yet," Edith agreed, "or our* 
baggage won't get on board, which will be just aa 
bad — no chocolate and cigarettes for our canteen!" 

"We shall not be left," said the Littlest, whitely ; 
"not if I have to hire six taxis to get us down to the 
ship." 

"How can three persons ride in six taxis.'"* I 
pondered, "unless we were Solomon's babies !" 

But now, at last, with only one taxi, and with 
the chocolate and cigarettes for our soldier boys, 
and our own modest baggage — here we were, being 
swallowed up in the mist, and watching the retreat- 
ing city suddenly blossoming with a million stars as 
the great buildings along the shore lighted up in 
the early dusk. Behind us, on the wet deck, was 
the tramp of feet, boys and girls — more boys than 
girls, for we were taking over many marines — and 
all of them eager and unafraid. Youth — ^Youth! 
So happy and so unconscious of its own significance 
on this gray ship ! It made me think of those young 
men and maidens, laughing and dancing and making 
love as their ship started on its voyage to the Island 

T 



SMALL THINGS 

of Crete where the Minotaur awaited them. These 
American boys and girls were all ready to laugh and 
dance and make love, too. . . . And the Minotaur 
was waiting. 

It was the presence of the girls that especially 
startled me. Indeed, of all the amazing things that 
have come bubbling and seething to the surface of 
life during these last three and a half years, there 
has been nothing more amazing to me than this exo- 
dus of American girls ! Has such a thing ever hap- 
pened in the world before: A passionate desire on 
the part of the women of one people to go to the 
help of the men of another people? Would any 
other nation, I wonder, if we were at war, send its 
girls across the ocean to serve us? 

Of course, the divine and terrifying ferment, the 
yeast, which is stirring in our girls, and driving 
them into the high adventure of Altruism, is stirring 
all women everywhere; but I am inclined to think 
that this special expression of it, which has started 
a little army of girls over to France, could not have 
happened anywhere but in the United States, where 
fathers and mothers have so very little to say as to 
the behavior of their daughters. They may stand on 

8 



FACING FRANCE 

the dock and squeeze the wet ball of a handkerchief 
against quivering lips, and they may run half way 
down the gang-plank and let the raw December 
wind rumple the hair around their thin temples — 
but they cannot hold their girls back from the gray 
sea, where heaven only knows what may meet them! 
Yet through the parental bewilderment which is 
one of the hallmarks of the twentieth century, there 
is one thing of which we must all be sure, namely, 
that these young creatures (who in the matter of al- 
truism are teaching their grandmothers how to suck 
eggs), these girls are generally moved by an honest 
impulse of service. Granted that the accusation of 
the grandmothers is true, and that they go over to 
France for the love of adventure, and because of 
the lure of the uniform, or the desire to stand up be- 
side the boys and say, "Here ! Look at me; I'm just 
as good a soldier in my way as you are in yours!" 
("When the war is over," said one of them, "the 
men will be ashamed not to give us the ballot !") 
Grant all these things, and the fact that none of them 
want to stay at home and help their mothers wash 
dishes ; yet the deepest thing, and the truest thing, is 
this impulse to serve. And it will be just as well for 

9 



SMALL THINGS 

some of us critical folk to remember who it was wha 
said, some two thousand years ago: "I am among 
you as he that serveth." 

So here they were now, a lot of pretty creatures. 
Salvation Army lassies, Y. M. C. A. workers. Red 
Cross girls. Excited, eager, not thinking very much 
(of course not! Youth would not be Youth if it 
thought!), not thinking very deeply of those gray- 
faced people on the dock. They were panting to 
"get on the job," whatever it might be, — ^which, I 
suppose, was why they began, the moment they were 
on board, to speak maternally, with innocent bold- 
ness, to any masculine thing that wore a uniform. 

As the mist thickened into rain the girls began to 
disappear, but the soldier boys lingered, leaning on 
the railing and straining their eyes toward New 
York where the million pin-points of light were airily 
outlining the unseen buildings on the Battery. Be- 
hind every pin-point was some human brain, some 
human heart, between which and the chaos of Ger- 
man intention, these lounging, shy lads of ours were 
going to place their own lives. They were not say- 
ing anything like that ; I doubt if they ever thought 
of it! Yet the fact remains that is what they are 

10 



FACING FRANCE 

doing — they are holding themselves ready to die for 
us. I wonder are we critical people, who stay at 
home, quite worth dying for? I am sure I am 
not. ... 

Happily the boys do not dream of asking ques- 
tions like that, — it might be awkward for us if they 
did. There was a question, however, which some 
of them did ask: "Gee, there's a lot o' girls on 
board." 

"Say, what are girls doing in this mix-up?" 

"Dey will hold de han' and smoo' de brow," said 
a French reservist, with a grin. 

"I'll give them two hands," said his Yankee hearer, 
and he grinned, too. They were leaning against the 
deck rail, a lot of them; boys in the dark blue of 
the navy, with V-necked flannel shirts, and trousers 
very tight around the lips and very floppy about 
the ankles, and boys in khaki, very smart and trig, 
and with well-strapped puttees. They looked bored 
and shy, and as they watched New York fading into 
gray space they talked in undertones : 

"That's some town." 

"The lights suttinly is handsome," came a soft 
Southern voice. 

11 



SMALL THINGS 

"I bet Paree can't beat that ^ 

Silence. Then a sigh. "Paree.? Little old 
N'York's good enough for me." 

Then some one said again, "Lots of girls round.?" 
and after that conversation flagged, but there were 
furtive glances up and down the wet deck . . . 
Later, when they thronged into the saloon for din- 
ner, the reason why the girls had vanished was ap^ 
parent: Uniforms! Red Crosses! Red Triangles! 
Khaki coats and skirts — strange little caps! Mili- 
tary shoulders — martial steps. It was all so charm- 
ing and so funny and so profoundly moving. It was 
the child's love of "dressing up," it was the race 
instinct of uniformity, and it was the sign and sym- 
bol of that diviner impulse of Service! No wonder, 
with that purpose in their minds, that they forgot 
the Gray Rat. 

Overnight, the grayness of the weather melted 
into sunshine and mild airs. There was a steady 
keel, and the decks dried off, so that for the next 
few days the panorama of youth went on before 
rows of somnolent steamer chairs from which, how- 
ever, an occasional eye was lifted to watch the girls 

12 



FACING FRANCE 

taking the soldiers under maternal wings, and the 
amusing meekness with which the boys accepted all 
the good advice offered to them. Behold one girl 
(she looked eighteen, but she must have been in the 
twenties, or else her father and mother really are 
crazy!), she had annexed two youngsters who knew, 
each of them, just one French word, "Om," so she 
offered to give them French lessons. Round and 
round the deck they went, the three of them, the 
boys' rollicking bass following her clear treble: 

*'Now repeat, all together: 

Parlez vous (stamp!) 

Parlez vous (stamp!) 

Parlez vous (stamp!) 

Frangals! (stamp! stamp!)" 

As an interrogation, the phrase would not seem to 
have, on French soil, great usefulness, but the spirit 
of the teacher and the earnestness of the pupils were 
beyond doubt. Am I making fun of our girls ? Noth- 
ing is further from my mind! They are just as 
sincere as any of the older, graver women who also 
tried to make friends with the lads (who were quite 
obviously bored by them) ; I am not critical or dis- 
trustful ; I am only deeply puzzled by their presence 

13 



SMALL THINGS 

here on the gray ship; for, afte-r all, there is sa 
much work to be done at home. . , . 

What are they going over to France to do ? Some 
are stenographers for the civil branches of relief 
work, and I am told they are very greatly needed; 
some are volunteer aids, who (if they can stand the 
strain) will be of great assistance to the overworked, 
nerve-weary trained nurses in the hospitals; some 
are regular nurses ; some are to make surgical dress- 
ings (which I should think the French girls could do 
quite as well with the advantage of being able to earn 
some money by it) ; some are to do canteen work for 
our own men. Of the value of this canteen work 
there cannot be any doubt, and I am told (this for 
the comfort of some worrying American parents) it 
does not involve anything more dangerous than a 
few hardships, which may be very good for girls 
whose knowledge of "hardship" has only come 
through occasional dips into settlement work, — dips 
taken from homes where hardship is unknown, much 
as one takes a cold bath in a warm bathroom. 

Some of the canteen workers are men ; if they are 
young men, they will encounter certain hardships of 
their own that the girls know nothing about. I 

14 



FACING FRANCE 

mean the **cold shoulder" of the soldiers. That is 
obvious, even here on board ship. Boys who are 
going into the trenches are already resenting the fact 
that fellows of their own ages are "doing this sort of 
thing." It's all well enough for girls to be flying 
around making sandwiches and "holding de ban' 
and smooding de brow," — but men! 

"Well, Charlie's got an easy job, ain't he.?^" a 
marine said; and the occupant of the next steamer 
chair couldn't help hearing the sneer in his voice and 
noticing the grin with which he looked at a young 
man swaggering (just a little), along the deck, very 
obviously conscious of his Red Cross uniform. "They 
wear our togs, but I notice they mean to keep their 
feet dry," the sailor said. 

One young fellow who was coming over to do re- 
lief work heard the taunt, and his jaw set. *'I 
suppose that's how it looks," he said. After a while 
he growled out, "I was turned down because I have 
a rotten bad heart, but they can't keep me out of 
relief work, thank the Lord ! The Y. M. C. A has 
given me a berth." 

I am very certain of the devotion of some of the 
men thus criticized by the soldiers. They are far 

15 



SMALL THINGS 

from being "slackers." I think, for some of them, it 
has taken more courage to face canteen service with 
its implication of safety, than it would to face the 
German fire in the trenches. I am told that Colonel 
Roosevelt said not long ago something to the effect 
that no able-bodied man who could be in the trenches, 
had any right to be in any branch of civil relief ; and 
one fine young fellow who is held back *by physical 
disability said with a groan, "Gosh, he's dead right !" 
I say this because the criticism of the soldiers and 
civilians ought to be tempered with the knowledge 
that often the Y. M. C. A. secretaries are in the can- 
teens only because the War Office will not let them be 
in the trenches. But to disarm the critic, to add to 
the worker's influence, I da wish these young men 
workers could "wear some distinctive uniform which 
would confess at once their desire and their inability 
to be on the fighting line ! 

As the mild days came and went, we sailed over 
serene seas and learned a good deal about each 
other. We middle-aged folk discovered that Youth 
had some very noble ideas of its own, which knowl- 
edge made us a little envious or, possibly, a little 
ashamed. And some of the young people admitted 

16 



FACING FRANCE 

to each other that some of the frumps were not half 
bad, after all! Perhaps they even learned from the 
frumps a few useful things as to French manners 
and customs. . . . One night at dinner a California 
boy sitting beside me put out an eager hand toward 
a tall bottle in the rack in the middle of the table: 
"Please, ma'am, will you hand me," he began; then 
paused: "What is it?" he asked timidly. When he 
was told that it was the vin rouge of every French 
dinner table — that thin red wine that Americans 
think so sour and queer — ^his face fell. "Oh," he 
said, "I thought it was catsup." Poor youngster! 
he will find no "catsup" in France. Another candid, 
clear-eyed lad looked at me solemnly, and said: 
"Well, I seen a queer sight to-day. I never seen the 
beat of it: I seen a lady smokin' a cigarette!" 

When told he would probably see many ladies 
smoking cigarettes before he saw America again — 
"Say, not, not nice ladies?" . . . "Perfectly nice." 
When he heard that, he was dumb with astonishment. 
After a long time, he said, with a sort of effort to 
stand up with his ideals, "Well, maybe you're right, 
but / call it a funny sight." 

If he sees "ladies" doing nothing worse than smok- 
17 



SMALL THINGS 

ing cigarettes he may be thankful, or we may be for 
him! But it makes me wince to think of a simple 
youngster like this, whose ideas of right and wrong 
turn on matters of taste, such as cigarette smoking 
for women. One is dismayed at the shock it will 
be to him to encounter in a new country, a new 
code, not only of taste, but of morals. A thoughtful 
Y. M. C. A. worker shook his head over it ; some one 
had asked him how our boys could be protected from 
the temptations which will inevitably meet them, and 
he hesitated a minute before answering, then he said: 
"There is only one certain way, and unfortunately I 
don't know just how to do it: put the clock back to 
the time when they were six years old and let them 
learn the beauty and dignity and terror of physi- 
ology, froTfi their mothers^ lips. If one of our boys 
doesn't stand up against temptation in France or 
anywhere else — cJierchez la Mere! — some mother has 
not stood up to her duty." 

I wish all the mothers of six-year-old boys in 
America would ponder these words. 

As that placid week slipped by, a spirit of placid- 
ity seemed to possess the ship; but there came a 
morning when a flurry of interest stirred the sleepy 

18 



FACING FRANCE 

steamer chairs. "Getting near the danger zone," 
people said to each other, smiling. "Gracious, how 
exciting!" a pretty girl said joyously. 

"Now, you keep a sharp lookout for anything that 
pops up out of the water and looks like a stovepipe," 
her companion told her. 

"Water^s kind o' cold; what?" a soldier said. 

"Naw ! Come on in, water's fine !" came a sailor's 
retort. 

Then some one told a "true story" of a recent 
crossing. "My cousin — ^well, my wife's cousin; she 
was fixing her hair in her cabin — putting in a milHon 
hairpins, the way the ladies do. Had a mirror up, 
so, you know; had her back to the porthole. Well, 
if yoji believe me — " 

"I don't," some one jeered candidly. 

"I tell you, it's true! She is a cousin of my wife's. 
Well, she was looking into the glass and, bless my 
soul, if there didn't pop up, right in the mirror, the 
periscope of a sub!" 

"What are you giving us?" 

"It's true. You can ask my wife. She told her 
herself. She's her first cousin. Well, the thing was 

19 



SMALL THINGS 

so close, it couldn't fire, and my cousin's ship was so 
close it couldn't fire, so — " 

"So, there was nothing doing?" 

"Oh, well, you needn't beheve it if you don't want 
to," said the story-teller, and walked off with much 
dignity. 

You might suppose, you people at home, that the 
experience of my wife's first cousin would have 
brought a little gravity into the eyes that began to 
watch the gray waves for anything that looked like 
a stovepipe. But there was no trace of apprehen- 
sion. The joking and guying did not apparently 
hold the dimmest consciousness of the need for 
anxiety. But if there was no consciousness of it on 
the promenade deck, there was on the bridge, where 
the captain stayed, day and night, for sixty hours. 
On the first day in the "danger zone" passengers 
were requested (by a notice outside the saloon) to 
be on deck at three o'clock that afternoon, m their 
life preservers, to take their assigned places near 
the various boats. 

We were to drill, so that we should know what to 
do "en cas de Vahandonnement dw namre." And on 
the following day there was another notice on the 

SO 



FACING FRANCE 

Bulletin Board: For the next two nights passengers 
were "avises^^ not to remove their clothing when re- 
tiring for the night. 

"Well, I've heard of going*'to bed with your boots 
on," somebody chuckled, "but I never expected to 
do it." 

When we obeyed the first order "at three o'clock 
in the afternoon" we were really a funny sight : Chil- 
dren encased in life preservers from knee to chin, 
fat ladies squeezed into the cork jackets, so that their 
arms stuck out like the wings on roast chickens, 
thin gentlemen, winding the surplus boards about 
their spare waists. "For the Lord's sake," cried a 
slender elderly man, "can't somebody take a reef in 
this contraption?" Two very forehanded, serious 
persons had brought with them, to combat the Rat, 
a queer sort of inflated non-sinkable costume. They 
waddled up on deck and took their places beside the 
boat which was to be theirs "en cas de Vahandonne- 
ment dii navire." 

"The Walrus and the Carpenter," somebody whis- 
pered in my ear and then chortled maliciously when 
the purser said courteously that no such suits 
could be worn if certain undesired circumstances 

21 



SMALL THINGS 

arose, because they would take up as much room in 
the lifeboat as two persons. 

**Tow 'em behind," the mocking voice suggested. 

There was much excited calling for cameras, much 
posing and grouping: "Now, snap me! oh, won't 
Mother have a fit when she sees this ?" 

"Mother" has probably had many fits during these 
days while she has been calculating just when her 
girl or boy would reach the danger zone. Now, 
in the zone, the boy and girl, muffled in life pre- 
servers, are laughing loudly and taking each other's 
pictures to send home to her. And their laughter is 
the tribute which they toss to the Rat ! 

I don't know what twinges of uneasiness may have 
been felt in the cabins when going to bed with boots 
on, but as far as one could see on deck and in the 
saloon, nobody felt the slightest apprehension. I 
have wondered very much about this apparent ces- 
sation of fear, I mean fear as a deterrent of indi- 
vidual action. The people who are not doing any- 
thing may be afraid; those fathers and mothers on 
the dock — who are being taught how to suck eggs ; — 
they certainly know what fear is — especially during 
the days that the gray ship is in the pathway of the 



FACING FRANCE 

Rat — but the people who are on the ship, who are 
going to get "on the job," and may meet the Rat, 
who will — some of them — certainly meet in one way 
or another, the hideous mind that created the Rat — 
these people are not afraid ! I have not seen, in the 
men and women who are doing something, (something 
which may very easily mean death), one single trace 
of fear. 

I asked an eminent psychologist. Dr. Morton 
Prince, why fear seems to have so entirely disap- 
peared among people who are actively connected 
with the war, and he gave the following explanation 
(I cannot quote his exact words, but they were to 
this effect) : 

"No single human mind can experience two emo- 
tions at the same time ; it cannot be both angry and 
afraid. If you are frightfully angry, you feel no 
fear; if you are horribly afraid, you feel no anger. 
At the present moment, the whole world is intensely 
angry, and is expressing anger by action ; therefore 
it cannot express, or even experience fear. . . ." 

The boys and girls bundled up in life preservers, 
taking snapshots of each other while waiting for a 
periscope to *pop up,' did not know, probably, that 



SMALL THINGS 

thej were "angry" at the mad spirit which has 
turned the world upside down, and set a torch to the 
edifice of civilization. Yet, perhaps Dr. Prince is 
right, and it is their unconscious share in the anger 
of a justly incensed world, which is bearing them on 
wings of iron and fire across the Atlantic, over to 
France, to express that anger in work, and so lose all 
sense of fear. 

The gayety that day on deck when the Walrus 
and the Carpenter and all the rest of us rehearsed 
our parts for the possible catastrophe, reminded me 
of a scene in a delightful old novel which I commend 
to anybody who has the leisure to read novels, nowa- 
days — "Citoyenne Jacqueline." (Alas, I have for- 
gotten the author's name ; I think it was Tyler, but 
authors are so easily forgotten!) It is a story of 
the French Revolution : in the prison of the Abbaye, 
where the aristocrates calmly awaited death, the 
young ladies and gentlemen amused themselves by 
getting up a play, of which the great act was the 
beheading of the heroine. Chairs formed the guillo- 
tine, and the leading lady dressed her hair a la mort; 
the executioner, a marquis, conducted her to the 
knife, with a realistic brutality upon which Simon 



FACING FRANCE 

himself could not have improved! This play was 
liable to interruption by the voice of the jailer read- 
ing the list of names for the scaffold the next day 
just as our hilarious masquerade in life-preservers 
was liable to the interruption of a torpedo. There 
are more than a hundred years between those young 
French aristocrates and our American girls and 
boys, but the spirit of high and laughing contempt 
of death belongs to great moments, and knows no 
age! . . . 

Well! After all the preparations and the scoff- 
ing — the gray Rat never poked his evil snout above 
the water. 

"What a bore; all this fuss and no sub,'* some- 
body complained. The disappointment in her face 
was ridiculously sincere, but I wondered how her 
mother would feel about it? . . . So we came, safely, 
smoothly, through soft autumnal airs into Harbor. 
Never mind what harbor ! If I mentioned it, I could 
not mention very pleasant things connected with it. 
The first pleasant thing, was that we passed, on the 
way to the landing stage, a camp of German prison- 
ers, — which gave us great satisfaction ! And the sec- 
ond pleasant thing, was a camp of American soldiers. 

25 



SMALL THINGS 

How these last cheered when they saw us ! And how 
we cheered back again and waved handkerchiefs and 
little flags, and yelled greetings, in reply to repeated 
cries from the shore of "What do you know ?" 

The French reservist looked puzzled. "Why," 
said he, "do they ask what we know? We have been 
ten days at sea, and know nothing." 

And so it was, that at last, leaving the Rat behind 
us, and "knowing" indeed very little, we clambered 
down a gang-plank pitched at a frightful angle, and 
found ourselves in France. So far, except for the 
consciousness of the Rat, and our shrouded port- 
holes at night, we had seen, of course, no sign of 
war ; but that night on shore the sign was given us : 
We sat down to our first meal, and by every plate 
was a slice of hard, slightly sour, coarse, dark bread. 
When we took it into our hands and broke it, I think 
we felt it was sacramental. France was saying to us : 
"Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for the 
world." 

And so, for a silent moment, we did indeed feed 
on the broken body of France, by faith, and with 
thanksgiving for the opportunity that had come to 
us to serve Her. 

26 



II 

DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

SO we took our first communion with the Saints 
and Sufferers — yet, when we left the nameless 
Port the next morning, and began the long, 
slow journey to Paris — ^we did not encounter any 
French people labeled with these high titles. Indeed 
we saw very little sign of war — unless it was the wom- 
en and old, old men working in the fields, or the girls, 
thin, tired, raucous-voiced, who were acting as con- 
ductors on the train, or whom we could see, at the 
railroad stations, pushing baggage trucks, and pull- 
ing and hauling boxes and bales out of freight cars. 
Soldiers in blue uniforms lounged about, some smok- 
ing, others looking enviously at those fortunate 
enough to have cigarettes ; they talked, and laughed, 
and scolded — and seemed to be just as commonplace 
as we were ourselves. I think, after our exalted mo- 
ment of eating that black bread on French soil, this 
was a little shock ; I don't know just what we expect- 

m 



\ 



SMALL THINGS 

ed — thrills, I suppose. It takes time to learn that 
the "commonplace" can be the most thrilling thing in 
the world. And courage and patience and endurance 
have become a commonplace in France! But we 
didn't know that, when we started on our long, dirty, 
tiring journey to Paris. It is astonishing how many 
things we didn't know ! But to know that you don't 
know is said to be a step on the road to knowledge. 
We took several such steps in the next few weeks. I 
cannot see now, at the end of December, that I am 
appreciably nearer the goal, but I can at least vouch 
for the sobering effect of each successive step. And 
if all the people at home who read the front page of 
the daily paper, and feel that they know pretty well 
what is going on here, not only as to the war but as to 
thought and feeling, would just come to France, 
there would be quite a procession of Americans tak- 
ing these uncomfortable and educating steps ! 

For one thing, they would be startled to realize 
as they walked together on this hard road, that the 
war, to us, inconvenienced but cheerful people in 
America, had been, up to 1918, still more or less 
of a Show. Except for the few who had sons ot 
brothers or sweethearts in the Cast, we were inter- 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

ested (but not painfully interested) spectators. Of 
course we were sufficiently impressed by the emo- 
tional appeals of the Production, to hustle about 
on committees and urge other people to give money 
to Relief Funds. And some of us even, when we 
went out to dinner parties^ took our knitting along 
— grim, gray socks or sweaters in satin knitting bags 
which cost as much as two or three sweaters ! On 
such occasions there were apt to be gay warnings 
from hostesses : "You are only going to have a 'war 
dinner' you know!" And then we would find our- 
selves working our way through five or six courses. 
I don't know how it is now, but up to 1918, even 
the sugar scarcity was still, except to poor people, 
rather a joke — uncomfortable, of course; annoying, 
even; but something to talk about: 

"My dear, imagine, literally no sugar in the house ! 
Did you ever know anything so absurd? You should 
hear my boys growl at having no sugar on their 
cereal at breakfast !" 

This was before we left home. . . . Now, in this 
dark, cold rainy Paris, as I look back from my bleak, 
up-hill road toward knowledge, on those pleasantly 
excited days, it seems to me that in our relation to 

29 



SMALL THINGS 

the war we were, all of us, very much aware of our- 
selves. We were entirely sincere, but we were self- 
conscious. The war was not real. That comes home 
to one when one sees Reality over here — ^where there 
are no dinner parties at which gorgeous satin bags 
can present the dramatic contrast of gray sweaters 
and clicking needles lying on silken laps. One faces 
Reality at every French table at which one sits down 
— without any merry warning to expect only *Var 
food" ! For there is no other sort of food, for any 
one, anywhere. As for scarcity in this or that, it is 
no longer "interesting" as a topic of conversation — it 
is sobering. Looking back at the United States from 
this silent untalkative Reality, it seems as if during 
these three years, American knowledge of what war 
means had been Academic. The difference is the dif- 
ference between studying the laws of electricity and 
being struck by lightning. France has been struck 
by lightning. Even our few weeks in Paris have 
shown us that! War has scarred and gashed 
the French people as a bolt from a black 
cloud plows and tears down through the heart of a 
tree. As a result, the relation of the individual to the 
great catastrophe is devoid of self-consciousness; it 

SO 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

is just plain, undramatic misery — and courage. It is 
deprivation, apprehension, destroying grief — and si- 
lent endurance. And it is all war dinners — and the 
knitting is to keep one's own children warm. Satin 
bags are not needed for that! In other words, 
everybody is in the Cast of the Terrible Show — no- 
body is a Spectator. Agony is not Academic. 

"You people at home," said an American who has 
lived here for many years, "don't take the war seri- 
ously." Which is only another way of saying that it 
is not real to us. "It will be real to you," said a 
bent and bowed old French woman, "when your 
casualty lists begin to come in" 

Her words were like a rough hand suddenly 
squeezing one's heart ; they left her hearers, we three 
easy-going Americans, dumb. There is really noth- 
ing to say to such a remark. Her eyes, fathomless 
black eyes, seemed to see beyond us, and rest on her 
own Reality: two sons, dead, somewhere in France. 
It was then that I took another step on the road to 
knowledge, and began to feel that, in spite of the 
kindliness of their welcome to us, some of the French 
people kave a faintly amused contempt for us. With- 
out any casualty lists, and carrying our knitting 

31 



SMALL THINGS 

bags (I speak metaphorically!) out to six-course 
dinners, we must seem to them, (staggering along 
under the burden of their own reality!) like well- 
meaning children; sometimes, in our cocksureness 
as to what America is going to do, like impudent 
children. And yet — and yet! The child is the 
father of the man; the knitting in the gay bag 
means our little eager readiness to help — and it hds 
helped! Many a French soldier has been glad of a 
gray sweater that was made on a silken lap. So 
don't let us stop knitting, only, while we knit, let 
us understand that the world is on fire. . . . 

Speaking of our understanding, there is one thing 
that the French have not understood in us — and 
which, when we get over here and are confronted by 
Reality — ^we ourselves don't quite understand : I mean 
America's luxury at home. Of course the French 
know that we have made money out of the war and, 
so far as I can see, they do not, being practical 
people, begrudge it to us. But how queerly (they 
reflect) we have spent it! Our ways of spending it 
have made them distrust a little, first, our common 
sense, and next, deep down in their hearts, our sym- 
pathy for them. 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

"It cuts us to the quick," said a Frenchman to me ; 
"you call it 'quick'? — those figures in your journals 
last fall, of the increase in your automobile business ; 
I don't mean your trucks and camions, but your 
cars of pleasure, your limousines, your — your 'tin 
Lizzees.' " 

On the unthriftiness of our expenditure of money 
he did not enlarge. I know he had his opinion of 
us. When it comes to thriftiness the French people 
are like ants, and we, taking no care for the mor- 
row of the world's conflagration, buying our "cars 
of pleasure," seem to them like grasshoppers. It 
was the other side of our extravagance; it was, to 
put it plainly, our selfishness that impressed him. 

"What!" thus his thought seemed to run, "the 
Americans spend this enormous sum on mere com- 
fort, mere convenience, mere enjoyment? — ^while we, 
putting our bodies between them and German in- 
vasion, go hungry and cold!'^ 

Of course he did not say this. It was unnecessary 
to say it — we felt it I And feeling it, we realized that 
the French are aware that (at any rate up to 1918) 
we cheerful people in America did not "take the war 
seriously." But they also are quite certain that 

83 



SMALL THINGS 

when we see our bank accounts crumbling under the 
assault of taxation and high prices, and when ouf 
hearts break under the blows of those awful "lists," 
we mU take it seriously 1 Until this happens I sup- 
pose it is impossible for us to be anything but 
Academic. 

**And that," said Edith gravely, after nearly thir- 
teen hours on her feet in the canteen of the Ameri- 
can Authors' Service, "is the reason, I suppose, that 
we didn't really get busy long ago and help France." 

This is the second unpleasant step we take over 
here on the rough road toward knowing something 
about the war, namely, the realization that, as a 
people, we took a long time to *'get busy." 

"We bought Liberty bonds," some one protested 
mildly. 

The other two members of the A. A. S. laughed 
sardonically. "Yes, and got a darned good in- 
trest on the investment ! You don't call that *doing' 
anything, do you.^^" 

**At any rate," said little Sylvia, washing, wash- 
ing, washing mountains of cups and saucers, "noth- 
ing that we have done has cost us anything." 

A calm remark like that is particularly unpleasant, 
34 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

because it throws such a reveahng light on what we 
have considered our generosity; and the first thing 
we know, after meditating on it (a little crossly) 
and thinking how conceited Youth, is — "It was Bot 
so Tvhen we were young !"^ — ^we are obliged to admit 
that we have "given" very little to the cause -of 
Civihzation against Chaos. Oh, yes, I know: / also 
went to fairs for Belgian children and bought things 
which perhaps I did not want. ("Well, they will do 
for Christmas presents next year.") /, also, at- 
tended lectures, and received instruction (unless 1 
was too sleepy to listen), and was gratified to think 
that the price of my ticket went to the French 
wounded. I, and you, and a lot of other women we 
could mention, with no self-sacrifice but some self- 
satisfaction, got up bridge parties, and sent the re- 
sult to Italian hospitals. And above all, did we not 
buy Liberty bonds, and feel patriotic — and prudent .^^ 
But always, as the little dishwasher pointed out, we 
received an equivalent for what we called "giving!" 
The truth is, instead of "giving," we have, most of 
us, merely "purchased"; — fancy things at fairs, 
knowledge at lectures, amusement at bridge parties. 
As for investment in Liberty, bonds being evidence 

35 



SMALL THINGS 

of our generosity, that is too absurd to speak of I 
The purchase of a Liberty bond is nothing but 
shrewd common sense, with patriotism thrown in. 
No ! we have not "got busy" on this matter of giving. 
Somebody said (was it Mr. Hoover? I have forgot- 
ten; but whoever it was he spoke a true and noble 
word) : "We must give, until it hurts." We must 
give without looking for an equivalent. Until we do 
that, we have not given at all — we have only bar- 
tered ! 

Steps like these on the road to knowledge jolt 
the poor American so badly that before he has taken 
half a dozen of them, his very soul is black and 
blue. But, all the same, he finds a certain satisfac- 
tion in knowing that in all this pain of the world 
he is not going scot free . . . and there is so very 
much pain over here ! 

I find myself wondering what pain is going to do to 
the younger people of France .^^ Especially to the 
girls, who, when the war broke out, were just mar- 
ried, and were settling down in their little apart- 
ments, and having their babies, saving their money, 
planning for chic hats, and theater parties — just as 
our newly-married girls are doing at home now. 

86 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

The thing that startles me about these French girls 
is not so much that many — oh, so very many of them 
— wear ^nouming, but that they seem curiously old. 
Youth has gone out of the faces of the young; in 
its stead has come a strange, high patience, which 
gives the impression of holding on, I have seen that 
patience in the eyes of a man undergoing a surgical 
operation without ether. "I have got to go through 
with this," his eyes say. And he goes through with 
it. 

"Gosh !" said one of my girls, "the French women 
are up against it !" 

"It makes you think of that verse in the Bible," 
the dishwasher ruminated, "about when you've done 
every darned thing you can, just to stand up to it." 
I didn't myself recall any verse which used just such 
words, but I knew what she meant. "The French 
women," she went on, "are standing! And I sup- 
pose," she added, shifting from one tired little foot 
to the other, "there must be times when it would seem 
to them a lot easier to — to sit down. And let things 
go." 

*'They'U never *sit down,' they are dead game 
sports !" said Edith ; and then she reminded us of a 

m 



SMALL THINGS 

story of an old woman — -you may meet her any (day, 
her sabots clicking along in the shadow of the crum- 
bling houses that, in the narrow streets about old 
St. Severin, seem to lean toward each other to 
whisper and gossip about days two hundred years 
or so ago. She will have a netted bag in her 
wrinkled, vigorous, dirty hand, this old woman, and 
it will be stuffed with her marketing — a carrot or 
two, a clove of garlic, a head of escarole, three pota- 
toes, a shank of bone — ^the result of which will be pot 
au feu, thick with bits of bread, that would make 
an American cook, of ideals, green with envy! She 
is probably on her way to the shop of the Infant 
Jesus — ^whose front is painted a bright blue — im 
petit houtique bleu tres joli, where are sold eggs of 
a freshness, and les fromages and le hon lait. There 
is a picture inside the shop of the Infant Jesus in 
a barn yard, where some very fat pigs, and oxen 
with spreading horns, and many little brown hens 
are crowding about Him. Our old woman, bright- 
eyed, sad, smiling, coming to the shop of the Infant 
Jesus to buy a petit suisse, will make you very 
sure that there is no question in her mind of "sitting 
down." No idea of anything but victory over the 



~ DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING . 

dirty Germans — whom, however, she did not hate; 
only, as Madame must know, they must be ecrase, 

"Yes, there must be victory," says she, "even if I 
must give birth to other sons to fight for France !" 

"She won't sit down !" said Edith, summing it up. 

The comments of the two canteen workers about 
the women of France, were not, perhaps, literary, but 
they were exact, — the French women are standing! 
But they are growing old under the strain — for 
really there is nothing much harder than stand- 
ing. ... 

Take it that you have had your own little flat — 
most people live in flats in Paris — and, suddenly, you 
have to demenage, — pack up, and go back to live 
with tna/many or your husband's maman, which may 
be still more difficult (and not too pleasant for 
maman-in-law, either!). But hundreds, thousands of 
young married women in France have done just this. 
They have not enjoyed it, but they have done it. 
And so far as I can see they have made very little 
fuss about it; they have stood! A shrug, a frown, 
very likely some tears — why not? Wouldn't our 
girls shed a few ? I think I can hear now a nice girl 
in a nice little stucco bungalow in the suburbs of 

39 



SMALL THINGS 

Boston : "It's perfectly beastly to have to go home 
to live, but of course I'm up against it ; we can't af- 
ford to keep this house up for just the baby and me; 
I think our Government is perfectly horrid to let 
married men enlist! But Tom simply will go — andv 
— and I wish I was dead^ 

I quoted my dear American girl to a thoughtful 
French woman, and she looked puzzled. "I heard 
nothing approaching grumbling in French house- 
holds in 1914," she said. "There were a few tears, 
and an ominous silence. The long-expected sacrifice 
that every French wife knows she may have to make 
(for every French youth has had his training for 
just such a possibility and every French woman 
knew what must happen when the possibility came) ; 
the long expected sacrifice was accepted with resig- 
nation." 

I don't know that the little French wife said her- 
self that she was "up against it" — "Je suis aw bout 
de mon rouleau^' would be her slang, I suppose ; but 
certainly her Pierre or Guillaume or Jacques went 
off, and small menages everywhere doubled up or 
merged, or ceased entirely. And now after nearly 

40 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHINd 

four years, we find that youth has gone out of the 
faces of the girls. 

One of them said something to me the other day 
which showed that, so far as she was concerned, 
something else had gone with it, a certain kind of 
egotism. She is an exquisite young creature — a ma- 
donna of tenderness to her children and with a heart 
that is at the front with her young husband; there 
is a certain flowerlike quality in her that held my 
eyes and rested my soul — and with it a high intel- 
lectuality that was very compelling. She was, how- 
ever, about as unlike the average American girl of 
her class as an embroidery frame is unlike a pile 
driver. She had been speaking (because I had asked 
her to ; otherwise it would not have occurred to her to 
volunteer any information about conditions in France 
as they had affected her and changed her entire mode 
of living) ; she had been telling me of certain things 
which it had been necessary to do and to give up, 
and I think I must have winced, for I knew what 
such renunciations mean to youth. She opened her 
lovely eyes at me, and gave a little shrug: 

''Eh, bienf said she, "the individual does not count 
any more." 

41 



SMALL THINGS 

She said it very simply. She was as matter of 
fact as if she had said, "It is raining. I must 
carry an umbrella." And yet, of course, her words 
summed up the cost of this whole struggle between 
materialism and idealism. 

Very much the same mental attitude was expressed 
in a tiny letter that came to me from three little 
people — oh, very little people, eleven, nine, and 
seven, — whose father had been killed, and who had no 
possible expectation of anything pleasant happening 
at Christmas. The two energetic members of the 
American Authors* Service entered into a perfect 
orgy of Christmas-giving — finding recipients for 
their gifts through the municipality, which gave the 
names of a number of very poor women whose hus- 
bands were either dead or hopelessly crippled. On 
Christmas Eve, in the sleet and cold, and through 
the significant darkness of the streets of old Paris, 
these two girls went, with their arms full of pack- 
ages, feeling their way along narrow, unHghted haUs 
and toiling over staircases that wound up and up to 
chilly garrets. Knocking at one door they found a 
woman sewing as fast as she could by the light of a 
small lamp — sewing black fasteners on black guimpes. 

42 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

Her startled look at the sight of the two Americans, 
who stammered out something about Noel, and left 
their packages, and fled, made the two girls laugh 
all the way down the endless flights of stairs to the 
dark street. But a day or two afterward came a 
letter, written by one of the three children who lived 
in that garret. The thin ruled sheet of paper was 
decorated with three flags — French, American, Eng- 
lish — drawn by a child's hand in colored crayons. 
Then in round, laborious writing : 

Chere Madame: Mon pere est mort sur le champ 
d'honneur, et ma chere maman a mis votre cadeau mag- 
nifique dans nos souliers dans la cheminee. Madame, 
cest superbe ! 

Superb? Poor little chickens ! only cakes of soap 
(soap is terribly expensive here;) candles, yam (this 
last brought over from America, for it, too, is costly 
in France), needles and thread, and oh, a very, veri/ 
little candy — **superhel'* But, as the little letter went 
on to say, even more than the "magnificence" of the 
present was its unexpectedness. "We had not thought 
we could have a cadeau de NoeV^ In other words, 
we were not thinking of ourselves. It was the same 
note struck by the young Intellectuelle. 



SMALL THINGS 

Of course Americans, at home, have not reached 
any such impersonal attitude, and it ik going to be 
very hard for us to reach it, because, as we all know, 
with us, the individual does count — so very muchl 
I am sure we are going to reach it, when our Reality 
faces us — for some of us over here, sharing French 
Realities, are already strangely impersonal. I found 
an American girl who has been driving an ambulance 
in Serbia, as certain that "the individual doesn't 
count" as any French woman I have met. 

"Oh, yes," she said, her eyes narrowing with 
memory, "yes, we always used to run out and stand 
gaping up, when the aeroplanes came along and 
bombed us. It was awfully pretty, — the sky is so 
blue in Serbia. Well, you'd see one of 'em coming 
along, oh, — high, high up, you know ; then you'd see 
a white pufF, just as pretty ! coming down hke a little 
cloud. Well, it would be a bomb," she ended la- 
conically. 

"But what would you do.? Run.'' Hide.? Get 
some kind of a shelter?" 

"Hide ?" she repeated, puzzled. "Why, no ; what 
would be the use? You never could tell where the 
damned thing was going to hit." 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

"But it might hit yowV 

"Why, yes, I suppose it might," she said; and 
frowned thoughixully. "Funny! You don't think 
of that, somehow. It doesn't seem to matter." 

There it is again! You, don't matter! What is 
in the air over here that isn't in the air at home? 
"We'' matter very much in America. 

And that is why, I suppoi^e, to some of our girls, 
the war is first of all this horrid business of having to 
go and live with Tom's mother, now that he has en- 
listed or has been drafted. (I can't help sympathiz- 
ing just a little with Tom's mother!) Of course, 
there have been sad enough moments, very tragically 
sad moments of worrying about Tom, and hoping 
that the war would be over before it was time for 
him to leave the safety of the training camp, and go 
to France. Which reminds me : Once upon a time, — 
oh, ages ago, we can hardly remember the time, it 
seems so far off, looking back on it now through the 
smoke of these four years of the great conflagration ; 
— but once upon a time, just after war was declared 
in 1914, there was a French mother whose two sons 
were engaged in a business of great importance to the 
Government. The question arose and was considered 

45 



SMALL THINGS 

by the Minister of War, whether these two young men 
should remain at home, attending to the business, or 
go to the front. They wanted to go, and their mother 
plead with the Minister that they might go, 
— "That is," she qualified, ''if they may be placed 
under fire. Otherwise I prefer that they should re- 
main in the factory." Here it is again! This mother 
is simply the child who expected the shoes to be 
empty in the chimney corner on Christmas Eve, and 
the young matron, and the ambulance driver, all 
raised to the nth power. 

For to know that t/ou don't count, when it comes 
to the safety of your own sons is the supreme indif- 
ference to the individual ! 

Yet I am told there are still women in America 
who grumble over our wheatless days, 

I wish those grumbling women — they are generally 
plump and getting a little beyond middle age — could 
come over her^. (For a few hours only. They 
mustn't stay long. France has no room to spare, 
no food, no light, no heat to give away ; and no 
desire for what she calls ^'les bouches inutiles.^* So, 
unless they are prepared to give an equivalent in 
hard labor, they had better stay at home). I 

46 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

would like to have these plump egotists, who "count" 
so poignantly to themselves, come for just half a 
(day -to see how the average French woman is meet- 
ing the personal part of the war; I mean the jeop- 
ardizing of her most precious possessions. 

Here is a little story that reveals it. It comes 
from one of our own boys, lounging against the 
counter in the Authors' Service Canteen. (I wish 
you could see that little Y. M. C. A. canteen! A 
small, roughly-finished room in the U. S. A. Bar- 
racks; so dark that electric lights must bum all 
day; a kitchen, about six by eight feet, which was 
once a bathroom, the tub serving now as a sink, in 
which we wash endless cups and saucers. Into this 
little place — ^gay with turkey-red curtains, and com- 
fortable chairs, and nice little tables for dominoes 
and cards and checkers, and with a Victrola that re- 
sounds all day long — come our soldiers to buy cocoa 
and cigarettes and chexvmg gum! In all our hopes of 
service, we three Y. M. C. A. workers had never had 
a vision of selling chewing gum ! But I have become 
so expert in handing out "three gums" that I can at- 
tend to business, and still listen to the lad leaning on 
my little counter: 

47 



SMALL THINGS 

"Say, what's chewing gum in French?" 

I confess, with shame, that I don't know. The 
boy sighs ; "I've no use," he says, "for these here 
foreign languages." 

"Why do you want to know?" 

" 'Cause I wanted to tell a French lady how to use 
it, and I didn't know what they called it in their 
lingo. . . . Well; I suppose I'll have to — to show 
her ... I think a good deal of these ladies over 
here. I was in the railroad station where the Poilus 
come in on leave just from the trenches — that muddy 
that you can hardly see their eyes! And wounded, 
too, a lot of 'em. And they go back to the trenches 
from there, too — to Mons or Verdun or any other old 
hell. W^ell, I was watching a lot going back, and all 
of their women seemed to be on hand to say good-by 
to them. You'd ought to have seen 'em! Talking 
and laughing to beat the band ; and holding the kids 
up to the car windows so that their daddies could see 
'em. Why, they was like a flock of sparrows ; jabber- 
ing and screaming at each other, and kissing their 
hands ! . . . Then the train pulled out, and what do 
you know? Well, I'll be damned if every one of 
them women didn't bust right out crying! Can you 

48 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

beat it? Chattering away in their confounded lan- 
guage, one minute, and laughing, and holding up 
their kids. And the next minute busting out crying! 
*'I don't understand their lingo," said the boy 
thoughtfully, **but, by heck, these French dames is 
some women!" 

Which made me think of a remark made by my 
brother, who was an officer in our Civil War, apro- 
pos of "some women." 

"Before a fight," said he, "Peggy O'Dowd is worth 
all the weeping wives and mothers in the world." 

The vision of those women, waiting to bust out 
crying, moved me to hunt up a copy of "Vanity 
Fair" in the Y, M. C. A. Library, and read again 
that chapter of the night before Waterloo: 

"It is my belief 5 Peggy, my dear/' said the major, 
"that there'll be such a ball danced in a day or two as 
some of 'em has never heard the chune of ! Call me at 
half-past one, Peggy dear, and see me things is ready. 
Maybe I'll not come back to breakfast, Mrs. O'D." 

With which words, signifying his opinion that the 
regiment would march the next morning, the major fell 
asleep. Mrs. O'Dowd, arrayed in curl papers and a 
camisole, felt that her duty was to act, and not to sleep. 
"Time enough for that," she said, "when Mick's gone.*' 
So she packed his traveling things, brushed his cloak, 
his cap, and other warlike habiliments, and set them in 

49 



SMALL THINGS 

order for him, stowed away in the pockets light refresh- 
ments, and a wicker-covered flask, or pocket pistol. . . . 
Then she woke up her major, and had as comfortable 
a cup of coffee for him as any made that morning in 
Brussels. . . . They drank their coffee together while 
the bugles were sounding and the drums were beating. 
. . . The consequence was that the major appeared in 
parade trim, fresh, and alert, his rosy countenance giv- 
ing cheerfulness and courage to the whole corps. 

This was the kind of girl Micky O'Dowd left be- 
hind him! She was the girl that helped England 
win that terrible field. And she is the girl who was 
on the platform of the Gare d' I'Est. 

Which reminds me of another railroad station, in 
New Hampshire ; it was on the first day of mobiliza- 
tion in the summer of 1917. Looking down upon the 
platform from the window of the car, one saw kisses, 
tears, embraces, agonized farewells, sobs. One saw 
boys boarding the train, a little pale, with upper lips 
inclined to quiver. And where were they to be the next 
morning, those fine, honest, slightly nervous lads of 
ours.'* At a training camp about a hundred miles 
away, to which fathers and mothers could motor to 
see them, and from which they could come home on 
Sundays for dinner. . . . "Oh," some one said, "for 
Mrs. O'Dowd and her curl papers !" 

50 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

For mj part, I am perfectly certain that some- 
where in the ofBng we have plenty of Peggys, only 
they did not appear in those first moments of the 
war. When the time arrives that it becomes a Reality 
at home, when it ceases to be merely an incon- 
venience and a worry, we shall get out of the satin 
bag stage, we shall begin to take, not ourselves, but 
the world, seriously. I am perfectly certain that 
when that real moment comes American women will 
be just as splendid as those dry-eyed, heart-broken, 
laughing French women! We won't fail our men! 
But to meet that moment as it should be met, we must, 
it seems to me, know, as the young French wife knew, 
and the elderly French mother knew, and even the 
French gosses knew, that "the individual doesn't 
count I" 

That the French men know this, goes without say- 
ing. It is they who show the women how to be brave ! 
I know a poor fellow who wears on his breast the 
croiw de gtuerre and the medaiUe mUitaire, He is so 
crippled that all he can do is to run a shaky elevator 
in this dismal old hotel. A week ago there came a 
dark morning; — but nothing much was said about 
the darkness, except by Americans. One of 

51 



SMALL THINGS 

these Americans bubbled over to the man in the 
lift. (I am careful now to say "lift" since hearing 
the instructions of an English elevator man. Said 
he: "Madam, I can lift you down or lift you up; 
but I cannot elevate you down." So now, meekly, 
I say lift,) The startled and alarmed American 
said to the cripple, "Oh, monsieur, are the Allies to 
be defeated, after all? Will the Germans win?" 
The man stared at her with widening eyes: "Hool 
Hoo! What? Germany win? Non! Mon Dieu! 
Non! not in tut/ lifetime shall Germany beat us." 
He paused, drew himself up, and added: "Madame, 
no ! Sooner than have that, I" — he struck his breast 
with a hand that had only two fingers, and rolled a 
ferocious eye at his questioner — "sooner than have 
that, I will return to the trenches." 

And with such determination on the part of 
Frenchmen as the "elevate-you-down" man dis- 
played, it is fair to just refer to what our own boys 
mean to do in the way of beating the Germans. 

The Y. M. C. A., as everybody knows, has opened, 
all over France, small (sometimes large!) cheerful 
places, which they call "Canteens" or "Post Ex- 
changes." One of them is in a big hotel here in 

6S 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

Paris — ^^the whole hotel having been taken over by 
the Association as a club for our soldiers. The 
American Authors' Service has been to two or three 
"parties" there. One was the Christmas Eve cele- 
bration, when a crowd of our lads made uproarious 
merriment, and then quieted down and listened to a 
little talk from a friendly elderly man as to the 
meaning of Christmas, especially just now, — "when 
we men are away from home. Because, for all of us, 
there is (or will be) in our lives the Mother and 
the Baby — and we've got to go back to them un- 
ashamed." It was a very straight and simple talk, 
but, as one man said, shyly, "It had pep." After 
the talk, they all — six or seven hundred men — 
roared out Christmas carols. 

How they sang! Then somebody said, "Does 
anybody want to go to midnight mass?" It was 
in response to that that four boys and one-third of 
the American Authors' Service, and an extra Y. M. 
C. A. worker in her blue uniform and with the scarlet 
triangle on her blue hat, went out into the snowy 
rain, through streets as dark as medieval Paris, and, 
groping a little, sometimes, or throwing on a flash- 
light for a second, found their way to St. Roche. 



SMALL THINGS 

(Of this little group, the two women were Episco- 
palians, two of the men Catholics, one man a Bap- 
tist, the other a Methodist, — and all worshipers of 
the Child.) 

"I come from Texas," one lad said. "My name's 
Stevenson." 

"I'm fr'm N'York," said another. 

I think there was a Kentucky man, too, and an 
Irish boy from Lowell, Massachusetts — and all as 
truly American as if they had just stepped off the 
Mayfiomer. They went into the great shadowy 
church, jeweled with candle-flames that flickered a 
little and blew sidewise, sending wavering gleams of 
light back and forth through the haze of incense. 
The choir sang "Adeste Fideles," and the boys' bass 
joined in heartily, though they didn't know the Latin 
words, then they all knelt, Protestant and Catholic, 
women and soldiers. Christians, all! and followers — ' 
oh, strange, strange sarcasm — of the Prince of 
Peace ! 

There were crowds of people there, Edith told 
me afterward: "Very old people; and so many 
women in black, and lots of little children who looked 
awfully underfed; and men in civihan clothes; and 

54 



DRY-EYED, HEARTBROKEN, LAUGHING 

poilus — some of them in such faded uniforms, and all 
muddy, just in from the trenches ; and men in smart, 
clean, blue uniforms going out to the trenches — 
perhaps they were making their last communion. 
And there were British Tommies, and their brass 
buttons glittered in the candlelight ; and some of our 
own men, in khaki. There was a great crowd wait- 
ing to go up for the sacrament, — "for all the world," 
said Edith, *'like a Bread line! . . . And it was a 
Bread line," she ended, with sudden gravity. 

Then, out again the six Americans went into the 
silent darkness of the street, hunmiing Christmas 
carols under their breath, and talking of home 
— Texas, New York, Massachussetts — America! 
Think what it means to a lot of homesick American 
boys to have this sort of honest, friendly "good 
time" possible! 

But what I started out to say was that it isn't 
only the cripple in the elevator who means to beat 
the Germans, our boys propose to have a hand in 
it, too. At one of their parties — this particular 
canteen has a "party" twice a week — the soldiers 
get up plays and do all sorts of stunts, and laugh 
until their sides ache. (Incidentally, it may be well 

55 



SMALL THINGS 

for us to remember that if we at home don't help 
the Y. M. C. A. to do this sort of thing, the men, 
being men, will, out of the mere tedium of barracks 
life, seek amusement anywhere, and if they find it 
in undesirable places, it will be largely our fault be- 
cause we didn't back up the Y. M. C. A. !) At one 
of these uproarious "boy" parties, one big fellow 
sprang up on the little extemporized stage at the 
end of the hall, and working his arms and legs like 
the spokes of a wheel, gave vent to his rag-time in- 
tention in regard to Germany : 

"One pair of socks was his only load 
When he struck fer town by the old dirt road; 
He went right down to the public square 
An' fell in line with th' soldiers there. 
The sergeant put him in a uniform. 
His gal knit mitts fer to keep him warm; 
They drilled him hard, and they drilled him long 
And then he sang his farewell song: 
'Good-by, Ma! Good-by, Pa! Good-by, Mule, with 

your old hee-haw. 
I don't know what this war's about, 
But you bet, by Gosh! that I'll find out. 
And O, my sweetheart, don't you fear, 
ril bring you a King for a souvenir; 
I'll get you a King an' a Kaiser, too. 
And that's about all one feller can do!'" 



Ill 

THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

I SUPPOSE a great moment raises most of the 
people who experience it, to its own level; and 
that is why they do not always recognize its 
greatness — or their own. 

Such a Moment has come to the whole world. In 
Europe the Peoples of all nations are rising — rising 
— rising — on the crest of its awful Wave! But 
they scarcely know the heights to which they have 
been lifted — scarcely recognize their own courage, 
and endurance, and sacrifice. They are all display- 
ing greatness — the mad Germans as well as the 
Allies, for it is Humanity that replies to opportu- 
nity, not Nationality. But the thing that seems so 
strange (until you analyze it, and then you see that 
it could not be otherwise) is that here in France 
there is no self-consciousness in the answer of the in- 
dividual. Heroism, for instance, does not apparently 
know that it is heroic. . . . 
■ 57 



SMALL THINGS 

"Eet was nozzing,^^ said Germaine; "anybody 
was to do eet! Me, I 'appen to be dar. Eet was 
nozzing." 

Germaine is so pretty that she makes one think 
of a pink hawthorn tree in May. She smiled as she 
made her protest, but she looked a little, just a 
little, impatient, for the fact was that a day or two 
before, Germaine had become engaged to a Belgian 
officer, and love-making was far more interesting to 
her than the small matter about which I had asked a 
question ; namely, the way in which a young creature 
who looks like a blossoming hawthorn, risked her life 
to save three hundred English soldiers from capture 
or death. . . . 

She was sixteen years old when she did it — three 
years ago — and time, and falling in love, have per- 
haps blurred her perspective as to her own heroism. 
But at any rate she said, blushing, "It is nothing!" 

Germaine's name is not known in connection with 
what she did, "because," she said, "for what should 
I say my name to ze soldiers ? Anybody would have 
did eet!" 

Germaine's "nozzing" made me think of something 
that happened many years ago in America. There 

58 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

was a certain fierce and arrogant old man who 
ruled his family, especially his elderly spinster 
daughters, with a rod of iron. When it came time 
for him to die, his impatience at finding that he 
must take orders from other people, from his doc- 
tors and nurses, and even from his two timid daugh- 
ters, was almost unbearable. 

As he lay dying, one of the elderly ladies mur- 
mured something to her sister which he did not hear. 
He roused himself: "What did you say?" 

"Nothing, Father, nothing," the old daughter re- 
plied soothingly. 

Then the old man, rolling a bullying eye at her, 
gathered up all his strength. 

"What," he demanded, in an angry whisper, 
''mhat words did you use to say nothing?"' 

I hope I did not look like a bully when I urged 
Germaine to tell her story, but at least I begged to 
know the details of "Nozzing." 

So far as I could draw them from her they were as 
follows : (She had just received a letter from her offi- 
cer, and was holding it in her hand as she talked; 
now and then she would steal a look at it, catch a 
word or two — and entirely forget my presence !) 

59 



SMALL THINGS 

She lived in the suburbs of a little town in north- 
ern France; she showed me a picture of the gray 
stone house set back from the street behind guard- 
ing linden trees (even the walls are not standing, 
now). Across the courtyard was (as is customary 
in France, where a man stays as close to his work 
as he can) the glass factory of Monsieur, Ger- 
maine's father. On the August day when Germaine 
took her young life in her hands the furnaces were 
cold ; the flare of the fires for the blow pipes was no 
longer flickering on the walls; the noise and bustle 
of work were silenced, for all the ouvriers were gone 
to the war. And Germaine's father, though beyond 
military age, had gone, too, speeding away in his 
automobile, to off^er his civil services to the Govern- 
ment. "Naturellement !^' said Madame, Germaine's 
mother. 

So it happened that on this hazy evening the fam- 
ily in the old gray house consisted only of Madame, 
with her three-weeks-old baby, and two little broth- 
ers, and Germaine. "The men servants was all 
depart," said Germaine; "eet was joost an old, old 
woman — et rrwi." 

But though the house was silent, everybody in it 
60 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

was thrilling and tingling with excitement, for all 
day long, over the countryside, rumors had been 
running hither and thither! Rumors that contra- 
dicted — asserted — ^warned ! There had been waves of 
panic, pauses of hope, then surges of confidence! 
"Down there," far down the poplar-lined road, were 
the Germans! Were they advancing? Were they 
stationary? Were they retreating? No one knew, 
— every one had an opinion. One can think how 
Germaine quaked. "If only mon pere had been at 
home," she told me ; "he would have known what to 
do. Me — I knew not, and ma mere" — her face 
twitched as she remembered ma mere. As the 
afternoon dimmed and darkened towards evening, 
Mme. B., lying beside her baby, fell asleep, exhausted 
by the strain of the day; and Germaine, alone, save 
for the old woman, was saying to herself, her little 
heart thumping in her side, "Ma famille! ma mere, et 
le petit enfant! Les gargons! What is to become of 
us, if the Boches come?" and over and over, "oh — 
if my father was only here!" 

The haze had thickened into fog, and it was quite 
dark, when, at eight o'clock, she heard the sound 
of marching feet and rolling wheels. . . . 

61 



SMALL THINGS 

Like any other young creature of sixteen, she 
rushed to the door to look out into the street and see 
what was happening. . , . Down the road, looming 
gigantic in the mist, came rumbling along a vast pro- 
cession of camions, great khaki-covered vans, '^poiir 
le ramtaillement ;^^ and beside the vans marched 
men in brown uniforms. She said she held her 
breath, until she saw the color of the uniforms, 
then — "les Anglais!" said she, and breathed free- 

ly- 

"Mais" said Germaine, "these English, they 
march toward the German lines ! Is there, then, to 
be a battle?" 

Even as she asked herself the question it was an- 
swered by an officer, who stepped out from beside his 
men and, saluting, asked if she could speak Eng- 
lish. 

"A var ^leetle," was the reply. He made a ges- 
ture of relief. He had, he said, asked many people 
questions as to the roads, but no one could speak 
English. "My company got separated from the 
battalion," he said, "and now we are lost !" 

"And in what directions do you desire to go. Mon- 
sieur?" said Germaine. 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

"Noyon, Mademoiselle." 

"Mon Dieul" cried Germaine, "you will be lost, 
indeed! You march, Monsieur, to the arms of the 
Germans. You go in exactly wrong direction!" 

The officer said something under his breath. "Eet 
is down der dey are !" cried Germaine, pointing into 
the mist. The young man wheeled, and threw up his 
hand ; — instantly, from all along the line of camions 
stretching back into the brown fog, came the clash 
of brakes, — ^then the pound and throb of waiting en- 
gines. The officer turned back to Germaine, stand- 
ing bareheaded in the rain. "Which way," he began, 
anxiously, — but she interrupted him : "Eet is var far 
to where you desire to conduct your troops ; there are 
many turnings in the road, and many crossroads." 
She paused, and thought hard. "Den," Germaine 
told me, "I remembered myself of my father's map! 
I say to dat officer, 'Monsieur! before de war, mon 
pere was of many automobiles ; he was of motoring. 
You comprehend ?' " 

"Perfectly." 

"I run to get dose map!" said Germaine. "I 
bring dem to you." 

But the Englishman put a detaining hand on her 
63 



SMALL THINGS 

arm. ''Mademoiselle," he said, "I must tell you — 
it is my duty to tell you — that you need not answer 
any of my questions unless you wish to. For if the 
Germans come and find that you have given me in- 
formation, you wiU be shot, Mademoiselle; and per- 
haps your family, also." 

Germaine, telling me, gave a little shrug : "I say to 
him, *dat is not a t'ing to be considaire.* Den I say, 
'Monsieur ! I will give you dose map ; but I will come 
wis you, and show you, for de roads is of a confu- 
sion.' An I say: 'turn your men aroun!' An he 
turn dem aroun." 

As she told me, I saw the rainy night, — the great 
vans backing and slipping and turning in the mud ; I 
heard the raucous screech of gears, the rumble of the 
wheels, the quick words of command — and I saw little 
Germaine, round-eyed and eager, showing the road. 

It was then a little after eight o'clock. Until 
three the next morning, company after company 
came out of the fog, on their way to the "arms of the 
Germans" ; and as each group of camions came lum- 
bering up, Germaine was waiting there in the rainy 
darkness to meet them. Officer after officer pored over 
"dose map" with her ; then, running lightly along be- 

64 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

side the marching men, she went with them to the 
cross-roads, stopping sometimes to turn her flash- 
light on the maps and trace with her small excited 
finger the roads that must be followed, giving each, 
slowly and carefully, its French name — which was 
the despair of English ears. "You go 'ere. You 
turn dare," Germaine would say. Then she would fly 
back again to her own house to meet the next convoy, 
and march with it into the fog. . . . One man after 
another remonstrated — both soldiers and officers : 

"Say, kid, this is a dangerous business 1" 

"Mademoiselle, we can find our way ! The risk is 
too great for you — if those damned Boches hear 
what you have done — Go back! Go back! Tell 
no one you have helped us !" 

"Dey say to me, dose man, 'Leetle French girl, I 
lof you !' " Germaine told me, gayly, tucking her 
Belgian captain's letter into her belt. "And dey 
kees de han' to me ; dey blow de kees to me !" 

She showed me how they did it, putting her finger 
tips to her pretty lips. "Dey ask me my name, dose 
soldats, but I say: 'Non; mon pere, he would have 
did eet if he was 'ere. He is not 'ere. Me, I do 
eet." 

65 



SMALL THINGS 

It was three o'clock in the morning when the last 
camion rumbled by, and Germaine, soaking wet, and 
chilled to her little bones, let herself quietly into the 
house and crept like a mouse past her sleeping moth- 
er's door. When she got into her bed she was so tired 
that she slept instantly, and it must have seemed to 
her only a minute, though it was seven o'clock, when 
the "old woman" came, shaking and trembling, to her 
bedside, to clutch at her shoulder and say, "Levez- 
vou^.f Levez-vous! Les Boches arriventr* 

Instantly Germaine was on her feet, rubbing her 
eyes and trying to realize what it meant. 

"Flightr 

Her mother must be wakened, and helped to dress ; 
the baby and the other two children must be made 
ready; the house closed. ... "I runned!" said 
Germaine. "I runned up and down, everywhere, 
everywhere! I went wis some little t'ings, ze ring, 
ze joolery, ze papier s de mon pere — I runned wis 
dem to de factory, and I buried dem, down, down, 
under one of de furnace, in de ashe." 

Then back again she ran, to the house, to marshal 
the small, scared group. Before eight o'clock they 
had begun that dreadful flight — le petit enfant, and 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

the mother, and the little scared brothers, hurrying, 
hurrying, hurrying along the poplar-shaded road, 
with hundreds of other refugees ! Mme. B. added a 
word here: In that terrible haste of departure, she 
had only time to fill her baby's bottle with milk ; just 
one bottle of milk for the next three days ! When it 
was gone, all she could do was to rinse the bottle at a 
wayside spring and give the cold, souring, milky wa- 
ter to the tiny baby. Said she — "I carried it in my 
bosom, Madame, to warm it." 

Somehow or other, this sixteen-year-old Germaine 
got her family — the almost fainting mother, the 
baby, sucking the empty bottle, the little boys and 
the old, old woman, safely to Paris. I don't know 
how she did it! — ^walking — ^walking — walking; a lift 
once or twice in some furiously driven car, then slow, 
hours on a packed train. But here she is now, under 
the roof of Mile. Guilhou, who receives so many ladies 
driven from the war zone — ^here she is, earning her 
five francs a day (this child who, at sixteen, had no 
more idea of self-support than has the sixteen-year- 
old daughter of any rich man in America to-day). 
She is earning her living, riding on a bicyclette, pur- 
chased by her savings out of the 5 fr, instead of in 

67 



SMALL THINGS 

the "motor of mon pere" — writing her little love let- 
ters, and never thinking of the night in the fog, and 
the three hundred English soldiers marching to the 
arms of the Germans, or the possibility that those 
same Germans might, before another nightfall, stand 
her against the stone wall of her father's factory, and 
tear her young breast to pieces with a volley of 
bullets. Her engagement is the only thing Ger- 
maine thinks of. . . . And there is something very 
significant, by the way, in that engagement. Nei- 
ther of the young people have any money at all; 
the Belgian officer's property has melted like snow 
in the sun. Five years ago, prudent French fathers 
and mothers would have held up horrified hands at 
such an engagement, but not so nowl Germaine's 
father, looking at the two babes-in-the-wood, 
laughed and shrugged, "Eh hien, c^est la guerre! 
You have no fortune, mon Captainef Well, my 
Germaine has no dot; but you are of a goodness, 
and I love you," said the big, smiling, ruined father; 
"so you may have my little girl. After the war all 
will be well," he said simply. 

It does not seem to us in America a Very extraor- 
dinary thing to let these penniless youngsters get 

68 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

married. It happens all the time at home, that 
young people of very unassured incomes set up their 
household gods, and many of us older people are 
thankful that we married with nothing in particular 
to live on, and got rich, or "near rich," together! 
But in France, before the war, parents, if not lovers, 
were prudent (too prudent, generous Americans 
think). Now they are heroic. But the curious and 
interesting thing is that they don^t know that they 
are heroic! Heroism has become a commonplace — 
so high has the Great Moment lifted human nature ! 

The French are taking all sorts of risks — of their 
lives, their comfort, their treasures of beauty and 
love ; and if they ever stop to think what they are 
doing, they say, like Germaine's father, '^Eh bien, 
c^est la gtierre." 

There are a great many different kinds of heroism 
over here, and they are all marked by this lack of 
self-consciousness. The heroism of endurance is all 
in the day's work; the heroism of courage which 
doesn't know that it is courageous — like Germaine's, 
"that is not a thvng to he considaire" is taken for 
granted. The heroism of self-sacrifice is a matter of 

69 



SMALL THINGS 

course. The commonplaceness of these things is in 
the air; they shine even in American faces once in a 
while : I came the other day upon a story of Ameri- 
can sacrifice which was expressed in six very com- 
monplace words : '^There was nothing else to do/* 

The man who spoke these words was so far from 
recognizing anything heroic in his deed that he 
probably looked on it as a sin! 

He is an elderly, taciturn, melancholy sort of man. 
Somebody who saw him told me that he was a "wild- 
eyed fanatic.'* The fact is, he carries about in the 
pocket of his soul a little spiritual tape measure with 
which he tests his own righteousness and that of 
other people. Perhaps his melancholy is because very 
few people quite come up to the standard of this tape 
measure of his, the name of which is — cigarette 
smoking. 

According to the belief of this man, a belief which 
he holds with all his honest, anxious heart, the smok- 
ing of a cigarette may imperil a man's salvation. 
He himself would no more smoke than he would blas- 
pheme ! Now, one may share his belief, or not ; that 
is not the point. He may be right or he may be 
wrong, he may be ridiculous or he may be noble; on 

70 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

these points there can be many opinions. As to his 
sincerity there can be only one opinion. 

The work of this man was at the front; he had 
found a shelter in a crumbling tower, all that was 
left of an old chateau. His little canteen was on 
the second floor ; below him, in the cellar, was a Poste 
de Secours, to which wounded men came on their way 
back from the field to have their wounds dressed, and 
after that to gain what comfort they could in the 
way of food, and something to drink, — and ciga- 
rettes. 

One night, a great agonizing company of men 
poured into and out of this Poste. Some walked or 
hobbled ; some leaned on a comrade's shoulder ; some 
were on stretchers. All night long there was the 
rumble of ambulances, the jar and shock of the 
abrupt stop, the clash of gears, the hurried lifting 
and carrying of broken bodies. There were shivering 
cries from those ambulances, and sometimes moans, 
and there was a drip of red on the cobblestones and 
across the threshold and down the steps into the 
cellar. 

Almost the first thing for which these suffering 
men gasped out a request, was a cigarette. One 

71 



SMALL THINGS 

poor fellow whose head was bandaged so that only a 
corner of his quivering mouth and one anguished eye 
could be seen, looked up in wordless supplication. 

"Want a cigarette?" the Y. M. C. A. man said 
gently. And the one eye blinked, '^es!" When 
it was lighted and put into the comer of the white 
mouth, "his eye smiled," the worker said. 

I think he reconciled it to his conscience, this 
giving of the "accursed thing," because the men 
were suffering, and he gave cigarettes as he might 
have injected morphine had the doctor ordered it 
for them. Happily there were plenty of cigarettes 
on hand ; but alas, there were very few matches ! As 
this tired Y. M. C. A. man stood there in the dark- 
ness — ^in the midst of that slowly moving stream of 
pain, putting cigarettes between strained lips, he 
suddenly realized what was going to happen when the 
matches gave out : the wounded would be left without 
this one comfort! — ^And he faced his alternative: 
should he be righteous, or should they be comfort- 
able? 

"There is nothing else to do," he said. And so 
he offered himself — ^his soul and body, in holy, living, 
(and perhaps entirely unreasonable) sacrifice, to 

72 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

those suffering men! He lighted (with one of the 
last matches) a cigarette, and put it between his 
own lips ; then, from it and dozens of others, for he 
kept one burning all that night, he lighted, hour 
after hour, cigarettes for the wounded men. What 
that may have meant in physical discomfort to a 
man who had never smoked, I don't know. It is 
the poignancy of his spiritual pain that goes to my 
heart. For pure heroism, I have found nothing 
more splendid than this sacrifice of personal con- 
viction. But to him, just as to Germaine, "it was. 
nozzing." 

Perhaps this man's God is more gentle and more 
generous than he conceives Him to be ; perhaps, hav- 
ing a sense of humor. He may even smile at His good 
child's idea that He could be displeasd that a man 
should smoke a cigarette. But he will not smile at 
the violation of a deeply held conviction to give 
comfort to men in pain ! "He saved others. Himself 
He could not save." 

I don't think the Y. M. C. A. man, in his humility, 
would have put it this way to himself. He was just 
sad and matter of course about it, and I don't think 
he would see any hope for the world in the fact that 

73 



SMALL THINGS 

he mas matter of course! Yet if you come to think 
of it, may not this misery of War ( and we are all of 
us miserable in one way or another!) be just making 
divine things the commonplaces of everyday living? 
May it not make God a matter of course? Perhaps 
this worker, who saw "nothing else to do" when it 
came to doing what he thought was wrong, to save 
others, perhaps he would be shocked at the sugges- 
tion that our Heavenly Father can be as intimate 
to our lives, as ordinary, as inevitable — as common- 
pla<;e !— as the sunrise. But there was a wideness in 
the mercy of the wild-eyed worker, like the wideness 
of Everlasting Mercy itself! 

A friend of mine told me he saw this same mercy 
shine one day in the eyes of a very small person who 
was carrying a very large hat box. She looked half 
fed, as indeed, I suppose she was, for with meat any- 
where from one dollar and twenty-five cents to two 
dollars a pound, and no butter, and almost no sugar, 
and not quite enough bread, how are mothers to keep 
flesh on the bones of growing girls who work in 
millinery shops? She came trudging along, this 
petite, lugging the box with some other feminine 
creature's new hat in it; but she paused under the 

•74. 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

shadow of the Arc du Carrousel. . . . Here was 
collected a crowd of boys, gazing, open-mouthed, at 
a soldier whose face . . . was a thing of horror! — 
and of curiosity, too, I suppose. None of the boys 
said anything particularly cruel; they just stared 
at that poor dreadful face. There must have been 
a morbid fascination about it, for all the passers-by 
glanced at it — and then turned away with shudder- 
ing disgust. The boys, however, frankly brutal, 
paused and whistled between their teeth and said, 
"La ! la !" They made, my French friend told me, 
"quolibets^* — which I suppose means, as we Yankees 
say, "poking fun"; they said "quelle trogrie! quel 
pif! Bon jour, C]/rano!^ 

The milliner's girl saw the face, too, — and heard 
the boys. I wonder what went on in her little mind? 
I don't know ! What I do know is that she stuck her 
tongue out at the boys, and hissed at them "co^ 
choTisT^ Then she went up to the poilu — and 
now behold the subtlety of the little creature: She 
showed him no pity whatever ! She rested her big box 
on the comer of the bench on which he sat, and as- 
sumed an air of great fatigue: "Comme il fait 
chaudr^ said she. "Si vous voulez etre wn chic type, 

75 



SMALL THINGS 

vou^ m' aider iez." To get him away from his tor- 
mentors, she asked a favor ! The man got on his 
feet with a bound; perhaps he had been cursing 
under his breath, perhaps he had been wondering if 
the water of the Seine would be very cold? — or if a 
pistol would be the easier way out of it? Be that as 
it may, appealed to as "a gay fellow," he jumped up, 
and the little girl, giving him her big box to carry, 
tucked her small skinny hand in his, and they walked 
off together into the hot sunshine, leaving the star- 
ing, gloating boys (who probably meant no unkind- 
ness, but who were just French boys, — and French 
boys are even less imaginative, when it comes to pain, 
than American boys) ; leaving them, my friend told 
me, eh alibis! 

I don't suppose there was any heroism here; the 
child was of the sort we call "gutter snipe" at home, 
and probably loved being impudent to the boys ; but 
then? was in her little gutter soul, the heavenly 
beauty of Pity — and Pity lifted her into an act of 
help and tenderness, which was "nozzing." 

If it were not for all these upspringing divine- 
nesses, blossoming in the War, how could we bear it? 
But there are so many of them, that the first thing 

76 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

we know we find that the only thing we canH bear 
is our own cowardice, or our own conceit, or our 
own lack of kindness. 

For that is another commonplace: everybody is 
so kind! 

Which makes me think of something one of our 
boys said to me the other day. The American Au- 
thors' Service was waiting on the platform of a rail- 
road station, and this youngster came up, and almost 
embraced one of us, because, he said, he heard her 
speaking American. "Gee," he said, "I said to my- 
self, Hhere's an honest-to-God American girl! She 
looks good to me; and her talk sounds good, too.'" 

Another Y. M. C. A. worker standing beside us, 
agreed that "American" sounded good: "I tried to 
find out where I was the other day, and I stopped a 
man, and asked him in my very best French how 
to get to Notre Dame. He listened to me, and 
when I got done, he said, *01d Top, I don't under- 
stand a damned thing you say, but I'd help you if 
I could.' I just about fell over myself with joy at 
hearing good United States !" said the worker, 
chuckling. "I said to him : *My boy, your manners 

77 



SMALL THINGS 

are not all they might be, but your sentiments are 
fine'!" 

We all laughed, and the soldier boy said, thought- 
fully, "Manners? Yes. I've noticed that. Say, 
we can teach these French something in the way of 
hustle; we can give 'em points on their two-penny 
tin elevators, and their confounded snail-gallop tele- 
phone service, and their chain-lightning post-office 
methods, where you stand three quarters of an hour 
to buy a two-cent stamp; but, gosh, when it 
comes to being polite, they beat us to it every time. 
And their eyes are so kind! They'll jew you out of 
your eye-teeth," he said candidly, "but the next min- 
ute they'll walk a mile to show you where to find a 
shop you're looking for. Yes, they're kind !'* 

Of course, when one tells stories of French hero- 
ism or courage or kindness, one does not mean to 
imply that the French people are not human. They 
are! Very I And our soldier boy's remarks about 
"eye-teeth" will be ruefully agreed to by many 
Americans in France. But the lack of pocketbook 
generosity, which has always been characteristic 
of the French, is the negative vice which springs 
from their positive virtue of thrift. They are not 

78 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

at all open-handed about money, but their "eyes are 
kind." 

The other day a little French woman who traveled 
with me thi^ough the scorching heat on a train 
packed as I never imagined anything but a sardine 
box could be packed — showed me this quality of 
unconscious kindness. We had to ride in what had 
been a cattle car. I judge, from reasons upon 
which it is not necessary to enlarge, that it had been 
used for carrying pigs. That day, beside human 
creatures, the two ends of the car were piled with 
great crates of cauliflowers. The French woman, 
seeing me looking, I suppose, a little dazed, and per- 
haps rather white, beckoned to me, and managed 
somehow to pull me up, to perch beside her on one 
of these crates. "CVsf la guerre!*' said the little 
woman. It appeared that she had been out in the 
country to spend Sunday, and now she was coming 
back to Paris with bags and bundles, and bunches of 
lilies of the valley which she had picked in the forest 
of Rambouillet, where they grew like a white carpet 
under the beech trees. Balancing precariously on 
the cauliflowers, she and I fell to talking about the 
war, and what had caused it, and what would be 

79 



SMALL THINGS 

the result of it. She began by telling me the reason 
why she was able to "speak American" so well: 
"When I was young," said she, "there was a beam 
gargon who desired that I should marry him, and ac- 
company him to Northern America. He instructed 
me in your way of conversing." Here she paused, 
sighed, and shrugged: ''Mais, nonl it was not to 
be. Instead, I married very well. And as for my 

lover Eh, hien, that is over, madame, quite over." 

As she was at least fifty, I thought it prob- 
ably was over; — but I, too, sighed sentimentally. 
"My husband is tres bon,^^ she said, cheerfully; "he 
is old, and of a deafness, but very good to me. 
The war," she said, "has not taken him from me, 
owing to his age. Mais, Madame, many husbands 
have been taken. Beaucou<p dw gens sont tres mal~ 
hewreuw. It is that these Germans are mad to so 
destroy the world. They are quite mad, Madame, 
And they are of a cruelty !" 

Then she told me some of their cruelties as we sat 
there in the crowded, lurching, steaming car, with 
our heads brushing the cobwebb^d rafters. Listen- 
ing to her stories, and looking at the people about 
me standing, hour after hour, packed together in 

80 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

the swaying, abominably smelling car, I wondered 
to myself: "Can the world ever recover from 'these 
Germans'?" 

At first, like everybody else in America, I had re- 
fused to believe stories such as these told me by my 
little friend on the cauliflowers ; I refused to believe 
that things which have happened, could happen. I 
was like a certain young monk of whom a French 
friend told me. . . . 

He left his monastery, this monk, to go to the 
front, but before he went he wrote a letter of great 
tenderness and beauty to the Father Superior, say- 
ing how impossible it seemed to him to have any 
personal animosity toward Germans whom duty 
might oblige him to kill. He said he had no anger, 
no hate toward them, blinded, as he believed them 
to be, by their own Government of hideous material- 
ism. He said that he carried with him in his heart a 
prayer for these misguided people and that he 
thought of them with gentleness. 

He intended to do his duty when the charge was 
made; — ^but if he killed a German it would be with 
the same impersonality with which he would cut down 
a poisonous plant. 

81 



SMALL THINGS 

It was after this letter that he went into action; 
and a little later there came another letter to the 
Father Superior. It was the wail of a mind terrified 
at discovering its own possibilities. He said that 
his company had come upon a little village — a tiny 
village of sunshine and plane trees and yellow stucco 
houses with thatched roofs — those roofs of France 
which are as intimate and friendly as the good brown 
earth itself, colored as they are by time and creep- 
ing lichens, and so old, some of them, that wall- 
flowers grow upon them, and tufts of grass ! But in 
this village the old roofs had been burned, and most 
of the yellow walls had crumbled into dust and mor- 
tar, and the chimneys had fallen in ; instead of little 
homes there was only a medley of plaster and splin- 
tered beams. For the Germans had passed that 
way. ... As the French soldiers came down the 
poplar lined road, the village, lying basking in the 
sunshine, seemed strangely silent; no children ran 
out to see them, no woman called a friendly greet- 
ing, no dogs barked at them; then they saw the 
reason of the quiet. 

On the ground in front of the houses, were dead 
old men, dead women, dead children, these last 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

thrown with gashed throats across their mothers* 
breasts. All along the street, in the gardens, and 
the little ecuries, were dead animals — dead cows, 
dead cats, dead dogs, even dead hens. Throats had 
been cut, necks wrung; poor furred and feathered 
bodies had been stabbed and gashed. Death — death. 
And a cloud of flies buzzing in the sunshine. Then, 
suddenly, in the midst of Death, they saw Life! — 
Out from behind a stable there came, leaping and 
capering, kicking up its heels among the dead, a 
little colt, — long-legged, shaggy, surprised-eyed. . , . 

The monk said that this sight of the colt, caper- 
ing back and forth in the sunshine, filled him with a 
sudden storm of rage, for which he could find no 
outlet except in a determination that he, too, would 
kill, and kill, and kill ! 

"I know how he felt," I said soberly. I knew it 
again as I listened to my kind, middle-aged French 
woman telling me her stories, and giving me one of 
her bunches of lilies of the valley, and trying to 
keep my lurching crate of cauliflowers steady. She 
said, very simply, "Madame, the Germans are mad. 
I will tell you what they did to my brother-in- 
law." . . . 



SMALL THINGS 

I will not repeat what they did; it justified 
her comment: "Qui, they are fous. It is necessary 
that they be 'ecrase,^ " 

"It seems to he a difficult thing to do," I said. 

But she lifted her head. ''Non! non! noni" she 
cried gaily, "not now that les Americains are here. 
They will help us — a little. Being brave gens, 
and having legs of a bigness, they will assist us. The 
war will end rapidementi" Then she added, calmly : 
^*If the Germans win, me, I will not continue to live 
in the world." 

"I shall not want to," I said. 

Yet, in spite of American legs (and good straight 
backs, and shining white teeth, and clear, hon- 
est, mischievous eyes — for our men really are a 
splendidly fine lot), in spite of our soldiers, and the 
French woman's confidence, most people feel that it 
is not going to be easy to end the war rapidement. 
That it will end in an Allied victory no one doubts 
for a moment ; only, knowing the Mind we are fight- 
ing, most people are facing a long pull. It is our 
knowledge of the significance of the German mental- 
ity, that makes us so sure of winning. We know that 
we must win, or— nobody cares to finish that sentence ! 

84? 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

The fact is, we have come to believe, as the young 
monk had to believe, and my little friend in the 
cattle car believed, and as I have been forced to 
believe, that we are not fighting with beings who 
are, in our sense of the word, quite human. They 
are — or they represent — the Forces of Disintegra- 
tion, — the Powers of Darkness ! We believe that 
what has been done in France, will be done in 
Massachusetts, unless "les Americain'S^' render 
"rapid" assistance in Flanders. New York kittens 
and hens and babies will have th^r throats cut, un- 
less the enemy of civiHzation is crushed here and 
now ! So of course we are going to win ! But most 
people over here admit, calmly, that it will not be 
an easy business to crush him. We Americans have 
got to suffer, too. But I believe, as my little woman 
believed, bless her heart ! that now that we are turn- 
ing our hand to it — the efficient, kindly, eager Amer- 
ican hand ! — it will be done with greater ''rapidity" ; 
— and in doing it we shall have our part in making 
common those Great Things — courage, heroism, 
kindness, sacrifice. 

So, in spite of those dead babies, and grandperes, 
and mothers, and hens, I hold tight to my belief that 

85 



SMALL THINGS 

"what is excellent, as God lives, is permanent!" 
And in this poor, terrified, foolish world, divine 
commonplaces are supremely excellent! The Y. M. 
C. A. anti-cigarette fiend proves their permanence; 
and Germaine's heroism, forgotten in her pretty, 
silly, charming love-making; and my little French 
woman giving me her lilies of the valley, and, when 
we got back to Paris, hunting and hunting to find 
a taxi for me, though she was in a great hurry to 
get home to her old husband, who is of a deafness. 

The world shakes with this unhuman war, but hu- 
man kindness and human heroism are as unshakable 
and as pervasive as Light ! . . . 

I want to tell just one other story of the uncon- 
sciously heroic; this is of a hospital. ... I found 
a French soldier lying very white and still in his 
bed ; his head was almost covered with bandages, but 
his hands — long, delicate, pale hands, moved nerv- 
ously on the counterpane. The lady who was with 
me spoke to him in French, and when he heard that I 
had come from America his voice was suddenly inter- 
ested : "The American soldiers were brave," he said, 
"very brave!" My friend told him (for nothing is 

86 



THEIR GREAT MOMENTS 

too small to interest a man who lies all day long, 
week after week, alone in the dark, with nothing to 
think of but five children who must be supported 
when he gets out of the hospital — how, God knows !) 
— she told him that I had written books. "Ah?'' 
he said eagerly; and then very shyly, "I, also, have 
written a poem." 

"May I see your poem, Monsieur?" I said. The 
excitement of talking to us made him breathe 
quickly; he fumbled in a little wooden box beside 
him and brought out a piece of flimsy paper on 
which were some typewritten verses. 

"My nurse was so gentile as to print it for me," 
he said. 

I read the verses, and looked at the white smiling 
face. 

"Monsieur," I said, "I will send it home to Amer- 
ica. We Americans love brave men." 

Then he laughed: "C^ ne fait rienP* 

(I can't help saying here that those five children 
still need care, — and I know my poilu Poet's ad- 
dress.) 

This is a rough translation of his verse: 
87 



SMALL THINGS 

The "Other" Light 

Therefore — severed from the world — and with closed lids 
I shall never see again what I used so to love ! 
The cherished faces — so far away henceforth! 
The divine play of light on things! . . . 

It will always be as if I were asleep; 
O clear visions of sun ! of evenings, rose tinted . . , 
Monuments — forests, flowers just blooming. 
Only a memory of you will remain! . . . 
But . . . 

If I lose suddenly this sweetness of living. 

Of seeing works of art, of reading a beautiful book. 

It is, nevertheless, not the time or the place to weep. 

For I carry in my heart the firm hope 

Of seeing one day, at last! shadows and suffering flee away 

Before the Luminous Eternity of God. 

Hene Dupuis. 
Val de Grace Hopital. 



IV 
BEADS— PARIS— JANUARY, 1918 

OVER here in Paris, I thread my perplexities 
like many colored beads upon a string. 
Perhaps, sometime, the pattern of a clear 
opinion may work itself out. At present my colors 
are only other people's opinions; and as I put a 
crimson bead on the string, or a black one, and then 
some crystal beads — many, many of these; and 
every now and then a gold bead — ^many of these, 
too; I say to myself over and over: "/ don't know; 
/ don't understand. I wonder . . ." 
And so I thread my perplexities. 
One of them is the meaning of the sense of un- 
reality which many of us Americans feel. "Nothing 
seems real," we say to one another, with bewildered 
looks. Back of this sense of unrealness is an inarticu- 
late something which seems like anger. Yet it is not 
exactly anger, for anger at least implies the outraged 
sense of justice, which is deeply righteous. This 

89 



SMALL THINGS 

emotion (whatever it is!) does not wait for any 
rational process, and cannot by any stretch of self- 
approval be called "righteous." It rises, with a 
sudden murderous flare of rage, in quiet, reasonable 
minds; then sinks down, apparently gone. But it 
has not gone. It lifts again the next day, perhaps 
at the sight of a blind man clinging to his wife's 
hand as he stumbles up the steps of the Madeleine. 
Of course this fury must be rooted in the sense of 
justice; but it has blossomed into a rank growth 
that hides the justice from which it springs; and 
is so remote from our placid experience that it 
has the quality of a preposterous dream. When I 
see it, or feel it, I slip a crimson bead on my 
string. 

Beside it, in the still unseen design, I put the sin- 
ister consciousness in everybody about me of wait- 
ing. For what.? No one knows. Some say for 
an Allied victory. Some say the same words, but 
add a question, ^'Then what .?" Others — only a very 
few — say they wait for an Allied defeat ; these whis- 
per their confidence that out of defeat will come the 
real victory — the birth of the Spirit! The Allies 
(so these people say) need rebirth as much as the 

90 



BEADS 

Germans. On all sides is this inchoate expectaff- 
cy. . . . And as I think about it I slip a black bead 
on my string. 

Yet perhaps this is a mistake; perhaps the sense 
of waiting for something undefined ought, as those 
whisperers say, to be symbolized by the color of 
Hope? It may be that some minds really are hear- 
ing, as they say they hear, very far off, very faintly, 
from across blood-stained years ahead of us, a 
Voice, saying: 

"TFaif, I say, on the Lord.'* 

Those who hear that Voice in the unspoken ex- 
pectancy are waiting with good courage; they are 
willing to tread if they must, even the hard road of 
defeat, because they are confident that they will 
meet Him at its end ! 

But for most of us the sense of waiting takes the 
color of Fear, and the black beads grow into the 
pattern. . . . With them come the crystal beads. 
As I look at these, shining among the rest, I wonder 
whether — there are so many of them! — any far-off 
interest of tears can possibly repay the nations — all 
the nations! — for their present pain? Some say it 
will. "Vivre pour tout cela^ said a man whose son 

91 



SMALL THINGS 

has died for France, "mourir pour tout cela. . . • 
ga en vaut la peine,'*' So men have always said — • 
for themselves ; but tears are not too much to pay 
for the precious knowledge that a man may say it, 
with passion, of something infinitely dearer than 
himself — an only son — mort au champ d'hon/neur! 
Yet marching with the triumph of the Spirit, is the 
grief of the world. A grief which questions and 
questions. . . . Surely never before have so many 
broken hearts stormed together the door of Death, 
saying: "Where? Where?" 

Now, here is a curious thing: In this new, unreal 
rage that has fallen upon us, some of us say we do 
not know ourselves ; but through Grief, many French 
people say, we shall come to know God ! And so they 
answer that word "where ?" with His name : with Him 
— ^wherever that may be! They believe — these peo- 
ple who have wept — that Grief will destroy a mate- 
rialism which, crying its impudent self-sufficiency 
into the face of God, has taken away immortality 
and given in its place, machinery. If this be true, 
we shall all share the high knowledge, for it seems 
as if there were more crystal beads than all the res^ 
put together. 

92 



BEADS 

No, it is the golden ones that outnumber the 
others ! Perhaps, after all, there will be no pat- 
tern — nothing but a golden string that will hold 
heaven and earth together. . . . 

These are my perplexities, which are jumbled in 
my mind like beads in a child's box: Why are we 
angry with this curious kind of anger? Why do 
we fear something that has no name ? Is Grief beat- 
ing the dark door open, so that a glimmer of Ligh£ 
may shine out upon us? Is courage to be trusted 
to make the race gentler? . . . 

Sometimes I ask Gaston what pattern he thinks 
my beads will make. Gaston's height indicates that 
he is eleven, but his little white, pinched, wicked-eyed 
face suggests that he is at least fifteen. When he 
happens to think of it, he comes in from the street 
to answer the bell of the ascenseur and carry me up 
to my floor in this dingy old hotel. 

"Troisieme, Gaston." 

**0m. Did Madame observe the newspaper this 
morning?" 

^'What about it, Gaston?" 

He takes his hand from the wheel of the anti- 
93 



SMALL THINGS 

quated mechanism by which the elevator jiggles up 
and down, and we stop abruptly between floors. 
Then he fumbles in some tiny pocket of his little 
blue jacket, brass-buttoned to his sharp white chin, 
and produces a crumpled newspaper — a single flimsy 
sheet whose smudged head-lines shout the Caillaux 
indictment — 

"Trattre!" cries Gaston, shrilly. 

"What will be done with him?" I asked, adding, 
mildly, that I should be glad to ascend. 

Gaston, grinning, draws his forefinger back and 
forth across his throat; then he spins his wheel 
about and we leap with upsetting rapidity to my 
floor. 

Gaston Is obligingly ready to cut anybody's 
throat at any time. He makes his vicious little 
gesture when various people are named, especially 
the German Emperor. And everybody who sees him 
do it nods approval. Here it is you see, — that up- 
rush of rage! We are, (all of us non-combatants), 
accepting killing as a commonplace; just as in our 
dreams we accept as commonplaces, the most impos- 
sible happenings of joy or horror; and the ages of 
evolution which have named them "right" or 

94 



BEADS 

"wrong" are as though they had never been. This 
may be because murder is now so general in the 
world. Or is it only that the "natural man" in us 
has been masquerading as the "spiritual man" by 
hiding himself under splendid words — courage, pa- 
triotism, justice — and now he rises up and glares 
at us through these fine words, with his blood-red 
eyes.'' At any rate, fury is here, and most of us 
are shaken by the surge of it — except the blind man 
groping and stumbling up the steps of the Madeleine. 
He, apparently, feels no rage. One soldier said, 
thoughtfully, "The longer I fight the Germans the 
better I like them." 

But we who cannot fight, and whose eyes are not 
blind, sometimes see red. I reaHzed this in one of 
the air raids, and I said to myself, like the old woman 

in Mother Goose: "Can this be I, as I suppose it 
be. . . ." 

It was nearly midnight when the sirens screamed 
suddenly from all quarters of the sky at once. It 
was a screech that ripped the air as if the scroll of 
the heavens was being rent; and instantly all the 
lights went out and we were in pitchy darkness, ex- 
cept as the surprised moon peered in between our 

95 



SMALL THINGS 

curtains. There was a gasp of astonishment ; then 
people who were m bed jumped out, fumbled about 
for more or less clothing, and rushed to windows or 
out into the street. From my third floor I could 
see Gaston on the pavement below, dancing up and 
down like a midge, and shrieking with joy at the 
rattling crash of the air-guns, or the terrible deto- 
nations of exploding bombs. A group of American 
girls leaned appallingly far out of their window and 
craned their young necks to stare up at the stars of 
man's ingenuity moving about among the stars of 
God's serenity and law. They were darting — these 
stars — zigzagging, soaring up to grapple with one 
another against the face of the moon; and some of 
them were dropping death down on our heads. As 
^'efficiency" duplicated the French signal lights on 
German machines, we did not know which were the 
stars of murder and which were the stars of defense 
— only God's stars were candid. And all the while 
the pretty young Americans (why do their fathers 
and mothers let them come over here?) watched the 
battle with exactly the same happy excitement that 
I have seen on their faces at a football game; they 
were all ready to turn down their pink thumbs for 

96 



BEADS 

a German aviator, only — "Which are the Germans ?'* 
one of them said, distractedly. 

A moving star suddenly seemed to stagger . . . 
then swooped, then fell, straight — straight — 
straight down, with horribly increasing velocity. 
We knew that in that flaming star were men keyed 
to furious living, panting, screaming orders to each 
other, sweating, tearing at levers, knowing they were 
plunging from abysmal heights to smash like eggs 
on some slate roof. As that agonizing star fell, the 
eager young faces were smiling fiercely, and I could 
hear panting ejaculations: 

"Oh ! Oh ! Oh! Look ! See him ? See him ! Oh, I 
hope he's a German!'' 

And so before their eyes two men dropped to 
death. 

Of course this sort of excitement is as old as 
human nature. But the difference between this re- 
joicing and the football and arena joy which is 
without danger to the observer, is that these women — ■ 
and Gaston dancing on the pavement — ^were them- 
selves menaced with instant death. Only a block or 
so away two persons were blown to pieces. Yet there 
was not a quiver of alarm ! 

97 



SMALL THINGS 

After it was all over some one said,, with a sort of 
gasp, a curious thing : "I don't, somehow, believe it." 
She paused, and caught, her breath with a scared 
look: "/ donH know who I arriy^' she said, in a 
whisper. 

Of course the- monstrous thing was not real to 
her; the whole business of war cannot,, for the mo- 
ment, be real to any of us Americans because fright- 
fulness is outside of our experience and our minds 
do not know how to believe it. As for this especial 
unreality of the raid, never before has the sky be- 
trayed us ; so how could those falling bombs be any- 
thing else but the substance of a dream? 

I suppose the indifference to danger was because 
anger as well as love casts out fear ; and down below 
the unreality there was in all of us a very real and 
righteous anger that the Germans should make the 
heavens their accomplice. But as for this other 
kind of angler, which made the woman who had said, 
in a whisper, "I don't know who I am," add, smiling 
fiercely, over clenched teeth, "I hope he was a Ger- 
man !" — that scares me. It is a slipping down into 
the primitive. When I climb out of it I am smirched 
by the slime of hate. Gaston, and the pretty girls, 

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BEADS 

and certain dull, elderly folk, all were seething with 
the fury of combat, and grinning with a lust for kill- 
ing that made us strangers to ourselves. I heard 
a calm, fat, gentle, and rather unusually reasonable 
person say: "I'd like to squeeeze his [a German's] 
throat, in my hands, and feel the blood spurt be- 
tween my fingers, and see his eyes pop out on to his 
cheeks!" This is not an expression of justice; it is 
a desire to commit murder. 

I have found this smiling ferocity in many people. 
Sometimes it is respectable and practical — *'No 
trade ever again with the Boche !'* In other words, 
death by economic strangulation! But how then, — 
some one asks, puzzled, — can they pay the indem- 
nities we shall exact? (for of course we have no 
doubt that we shall finally exact indemnities!) 
Oftener our ferocity is an open and unashamed vin- 
dictiveness which would like to feel the blood spurt. 
As non-combatants have no chance to sink their 
fingers into howling throats, they find it a satisfac- 
tion to make Gaston's gesture in their minds. 

Which makes me wonder, while I thread my beads 
in so many shades of crimson — Gaston's scarlet, the 
girls' blush-rose and pink, my own dull red — 

99 



SMALL THINGS 

whether our furj is perhaps Tiot ours, but just a 
ripple creeping into the pools and inlets of our 
minds from the tide of rage which at certain mo- 
ments rises — must rise ! — ^in the minds of the men in 
the trenches who, without the assistance of personal 
animosity, must do this wet, dirty, bad-smelling 
business of killing? They could not do it unless they 
were swept on by the surge of an impersonal animos- 
ity which does not wait upon reason. Once they have 
done what they have to do, this motor rage ebbs. But 
it does not ebb from the little pools on the shore 
which it has filled — Gaston's mind, and mine, and 
many, many other minds, which have no outlet of 
action; they lie harsh and brackish, long after the 
tide has swept back into the deep. It is the menace 
to the future of this inactive fury of non-combatants 
which frightens me, because it may poison the 
springs of an idealism which we had hoped would 
make democracy safe for the world. . , . 

Of course the rage may be more than a ripple of 
the impersonal fury of the trenches ; it may be, for all 
we know, the spume and froth from the lift and 
heave of a reasoning World-anger which is reproach- 
ing humanity for continuing to endure *'the foolish 

100 



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business of kings and queens" — a business which has 
brought the world to its present pass. Some people 
think Gaston is going to illustrate this World- 
anger and teach us to be done with our folly. These 
are the people who say they are "waiting" for vic- 
tory, but who add the uneasy question, "Then what? 
The end of the war, will be the beginning of — God 
knows what !" these people say. 

I asked Gaston about this sense of expectancy, in 
which he himself, although he does not know it, has 
a place. But he evaded an explanation. I pulled 
him in from the street, where he had been buying a 
petit Suisse for private consumption in a little niche 
under the stairs where, when not on the pavement, 
he curls up like a brass-buttoned rat and sleeps. 

"Gaston, I have waited five minutes for the ele- 
vator!" 

"The ascenseur is out of order." 

"Gaston, I admire and envy your powers of im- 
agination." 

Gaston moved the car up a foot, dropped it six 
inches then let it shoot up another foot; here we 
paused while he experimented with the wheel. 

"Madame, the dirty Boches return to-night.'* 
101 



SMALL THINGS 

"Who says so?" 

*'TQut le monde.'^ 

''And what will you do, Gaston — go down to the 
cellar?" 

"Moif" shrieked Gaston. "La cave? NonI Ma- 
dame a peurf" 

I said I hoped not, I really thought not; but 
"wasn't anybody afraid?" 

"No French people," Gaston said, politely. (The 
hotel was full of Americans.) After that he be- 
came absorbed in the Noah's Ark elevator and con- 
fined his remarks to, "0^, la-laV^ He did, however, 
while we hung between the second and third floors, 
throw me a kind word : 

"Did Madame observe the decorations of the new 
concierge?^* 

"Indeed I did, Gaston !" 

"La Croix de Guerre et la Medaille Militairer^ 

"And when will you receive the Medaille Mili- 
tairef 

"Madame, my age is such that je^ ne la porte pas 
a present. When my age is en regie peace will be 
here." 

"When will that be?" 

102 



BEADS 

"OK l^laf Very soon." 

"Who says so, Gaston?'* 

"Tout le monde." 

"Oh, Gaston, you have taken me to the fifth 
floor!" 

Gaston looked patient and lifted his little shoul- 
ders to his ears. "Madame was conversing." 

So Gaston "waits" for peace. And it is to come 
soon. It is not only Gaston's world which says so ; 
other and quite different worlds declare it, too. But 
their certainty is not quite so certain as Gaston's 
"La-la:' 

I asked a concierge's wife about it — a woman, 
heavy-eyed, dressed in black, sitting alone in her 
chilly little den at the entrance of an hotel. It was 
dark and rainy, and all Paris was cold, and the mud 
in the streets that used to be so clean, but are now so 
filthy, made one think of the mud in the trenches. I 
spoke of the war and the hope of an early peace — 
with victory, of course. She agreed, listlessly. Oh 
yes, peace must come, of course. 

"Soon.?" 

She hoped it would be soon. She was very list- 
less. 

103 



SMALL THINGS 

'*Madame," I said, "I rejoice that the American 
soldiers are here at last." 

Then she lifted her somber eyes and looked at me, 
yet it seemed as if she looked through me, beyond 
me, at something I could not see. 

"Madame," she said, with patient but quite ter- 
rible dignity — "Madame, the American soldiers 
come too late." 

The significance of this left me dumb. Fbr what 
kind of a peace is she "waiting".'' 

I quoted the concierge^s wife to a man who knows 
more of the real state of things over here than this 
poor woman (or Gaston) could possibly know, and, 
of course, far more than any bewildered American 
whose especial fear is of generalizing from insuffi- 
cient data and who only knows that everybody seems 
to be waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting. He 
laughed and shrugged with amused disgust. 

"Oh, you Americans have not come 'too late.' 
You may still help us — if you ever really get in. 
But have no fear, Madame, have no fear ! Whether 
you get in or not, we shall never give up while there 
are any of us left!" Then, even while I was slip- 
ping a golden bead on my thread, he added, his voice 

104 



BEADS 

dropping almost to a whisper, "but there are very 
few of us left'^ 

So he, too, is "waiting" for a peace which he does 
not define. But some people skirt the edge of a 
definition. A laconic word or two in the compart- 
ment of a train that was dragging itself, hours late, 
into Paris, was fairly definite. Two elderly French 
officers in faded blue uniforms were talking together. 
Their faces were worn and lined, and one man had 
white hair. Apparently they did not notice the 
American sitting opposite them, trying to forget 
French indifference to ventilation by reading a novel. 
At any rate, they made no effort not to be over- 
heard. 

"Eh hien" said one of them, heavily, "nous som- 
mes finis. Meme avec les plus grandes victoires, nous 
sommes finis" 

The peace hinted at in these words, (a peace 
which will follow, of course, an Allied victory;) is 
one which civilization is not willing to face. Yet 
some people think France is facing it. They say 
that the falling birth-rate has for several years been 
an anxiety, but that the talk about it now, apropos 
of a million and a half dead young men, is confes- 

105 



SMALL THINGS 

sion. "While there are any of us left" — we shall not 
be "finished." But, "There are very few of us left." 
In the United States we have heard, with horrified 
disgust, that Germany, facing some such possibility 
for herself, has — with her customary efficiency — ^be- 
gun to educate her people as to the probable neces- 
sity of polygamy. France has not been credited 
with any such foresight. But it would seem that 
she has it; and in its train may come extraordinary 
ethical changes (and for these, too, tout le monde 
"waits"). If Germany officially approves the Tor- 
gas pamphlet on the plurality of wives, "secondary 
marriages" — ^France, unofficially, but without public 
or legal disapproval, may read Mere sans Eire 
Epouse — a study of existing conditions, written with 
dignity and solemnity. It is addressed to the 
"jetimes files et jeunes veuves de France" and advo- 
cates — what the title indicates. According to this 
book, France *'ne pent eviter Vahime qu'en choissiant 
entre lu maternite des celibataires et la pol^gamie'* 
— to which last the author is sure the Frenchwoman 
will never agree. So, while the nation waits for 
"victory," some people face the fact that victory 
may bring France to the edge of an "abyss." 

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BEADS 

The essence of war is the substitution of one set 
of ideals for another ; it offers certain spiritual gains 
— courage, self-sacrifice, loyalty ; against those gains 
thoughtful persons must set the spiritual losses; 
one dares not enumerate them ! But is one of these 
losses to be the throwing over, with a coup de main, 
sex ethics which, imperfect as they are, have taken 
us so long, so very long, to build up? If this is a 
possibility hidden in the unspoken expectancy, surely 
the color of Fear has its place in the vaguely grow- 
ing pattern. At any rate, it seems as if many of 
these brave people, these people of supreme courage, 
are afraid. They are afraid, not because they are 
cowardly, but because they are intelligent. Their 
wisdom shows them two things to be afraid of — 
first, that an inconclusive Peace, leaving Germany de- 
feated and triumphant, may follow the Allied victory; 
and next, the thing which may follow the Peace. 

What will come afterward? 

As to the present moment, the French look facts 
in the face. To begin with, many of them feel, so 
they say, that the war now is as much a state of 
mind as it is a military situation. Also, they are 
recognizing several obvious things of which the peo- 

107 



SMALL THINGS 

pie in America seem quite unconscious ; first, that the 
French are tired ; next, that the English are tired — 
and hungry; third, that America (not the soldiers, 
but the nation) which has come into the war, "so 
late," is neither tired nor hungry; it is something 
much worse — it is not serious. America is stepping 
out into the cataclysm with a sunshade and a smiling 
face. The French do not resent the smiling — they 
smiled themselves with complete self-confidence when 
they started in. They do not resent the sunshade 
— they, too, know the parasitic plague of politicians 
who bind the hands of War Departments with miles 
of red tape; they do not even resent the mentality 
that makes it possible for an American soldier to 
say, "These here French 'aint taught trie nothin'!" 
It is not these things they fear in us. It is, I think, 
our fundamental lack of seriousness. Nobody in 
America is venturing to say that the bright lexicon 
of Youth does contain such a word as failure. The 
French people are not so — young. When they see 
us here — ^with our government's sunshades and smiles 
— ^they are kind to us, extraordinarily kind to us ! 
And they are really glad to see us, because they think 
we may be helpful if we "ever get into the war.'* 

108 



BEADS 

But their lexicon is apparently more complete than 
ours, so they smile to themselves, now and then, as 
one smiles at well-meaning and conceited children. 

Some of them say, a little impatiently, that the 
Americans do not know how big it all is, or how 
far-reaching in its outcome. "But we know! The 
war after the war — that's what we are consider- 
ing," one man said. "The present situation," said 
some one else, "is, speaking militarily, as far beyond 
the declaration of war in 1914, as the declara- 
tion of war was beyond that pistol-shot in the 
street in Sarajevo. It is beyond the question of a 
struggle between the Central Powers and the Allies ; 
it has become a cosmic question. CiviHzation and 
Chaos are at grips." But this is a French point of 
view. The Americans who have just arrived do not 
share it. They seem to be under the impression 
that it is all the local issue of throttling Fritz — • 
a thing which they mean to do P.D.Q. ! "Oh, the 
simplicity of us !" said an American long resident 
in France. "We are provincial in the death strug- 
gle!" And he went on to say that the World — not 
just the Allied Nations, and poor, mad Germany, 
who happens to be the bad child who took the candle 

109 



SMALL THINGS 

into the powder-magazine — the whole World is shak- 
ing! 

Well, the French people know it, if we don't ; and 
what their knowledge may do in creating a "state of 
mind" needs no comment. The two worn and hag- 
gard officers in the train put it into words : "Meme 
avec les plus grandes victoires. . . ." 

You will not wonder that I mark the expectancy 
in the air by a black bead ? 

The wife of the concierge calls that bead the fear 
of defeat; the brilliant Frenchman would name it, 
if he were willing to name it, the fear of conquest; 
the two officers know it is fear of national extinction. 

But there are others who call it Hope, and not 
Fear at all. This handful of dreamers have opened 
their windows toward the east. Their "state of 
mind" bids them look beyond the deepening dark- 
ness toward a dawn. They are certain of the dawn, 
ultimately; but they wiU not deny the terrors of 
the dark. During the hours before daybreak may 
come — God knows what! one and another of them 
say. But whatever comes, it will be part of a proc- 
ess which will bring about a readjustment of the 
social order. It is probable, they say, that Gaston, 

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with his hideous little gesture, will have a hand in it. 
This is their hope: first the Day of Judgment for 
Germany; then, a new Heaven and a new Earth; 
Chaos dragged from the throat of Civilization; our 
code of morals saved from the assault of an efficiency 
which would reinforce itself by polygamy ; the Ideal- 
ism of Jesus preserved for our children's children! 
All this through Gaston's surgery. He accom- 
plished, they say, a good deal in 1789. "But that 
which is coming," said a Frenchman, smiling, "will 
be for thoroughness, to 1789, as a picnic of Sunday, 
as you call it.'* Another of the Intellectuals put it 
in a way which would, I think, have appealed to 
Gaston : 

"It will come," said he, "the new world ! But first 
will come the world revolution. It has already begun 
in Russia. After the Peace, Germany will explode, 
then England, then France, and then you people ! — 
with your imitation Democracy." 

*' ^ Imitation^ ?^^ I protested, in dismay. 

He shrugged, "Can you call it anything else, con- 
sidering the way you treat your negroes? The way 
in which Labor dictates to Capital, and Capital kicks 
Labor in the face? The way your rich people buy 

111 



SMALL THINGS 

immunity from Law, and your poor people despise 
Law because it can be bought? Yes, Madame, 'imi- 
tation' describes your democracy fairly well. How- 
ever, the revolution may save a remnant of the Amer- 
ica which Washington and Lincoln created." 

"And during the saving," said an editor, joyously, 
,"it will be casser des guetdesf" 

It is fair, in this connection, and also cheerful, 

to quote the comment of an American on that refer- 

I 

ence to the breaking of snouts — and his slang is just 

as forcible as that of the French editor: 

"If anybody said that sort of thing to tw^," said 

this youngster, grinning, **I should reply, gently 

but firmly: 'To hell wid yez!' There ain't going to 

be no revolution in ours. Why, what have we got to 

revolute about? We're a free people. No, sir! 

We'll lick these damn Grermans out of their boots, 

and then, so far as the Allies go, everything will be 

lovely, and the goose hang high !" I fancy most of 

us at home share this opinion, and a great many 

French people share it, too. 

The possibility the American denied was put in 

still another way by a French gentleman, whose 

serene face, furrowed with suffering, shines with a 

112 



BEADS 

confidence that is willing to suffer still more — for 
with him experience has worked Hope. 

"Madame," said he, "I had in my country place 
two horses of an unfriendliness. They mordaient; 
they nipped, as you would say; they hermissaient. 
And two dogs that loved me. They were both my 
friends, but to each other they were of a ferocity 
terrible. I had also a gaz'l. ..." 

"Gaz'l?" I said, doubtfully. 

"Madame! Gaz'l. You are acquainted with the 
gaz'l in your wonderful country of Southern 
America?" 

Some one behind me murmured, "gazelle," and I 
said, hastily: "Oh, yes certainly. Pray proceed, 
Monsieur." 

^^Eh hien, mes chevatuc snorted and inordaient; 
my dogs fought and tore each other; but all, all 
united in attacking my gaz'l." 

I sympathized. 

"My gaz'l was, you understand, of a smell. It 
was a wild beast, and so was of a smell, ma pawvre 
gaz'ir 

I again pitied the wild beast. 

**Madame, it was winter. Je faisais des, reparor 
113 



SMALL THINGS 

tions to my stable wherein these animals lived. It be- 
came upon a cold day — froid extreme — necessary to 
lift the roof of my ecurie. I said to my garde, 
^Les animawx go to perish!' He said, ^Non^ Mon- 
sieur, they are very warm.' I said: 'C*est impos- 
sible! What have you done with them?' He re- 
plied, 'They are all in one stall.' I said : *My God ! 
They will destroy one another. The horses will kick 
each other to death, the dogs will tear each other 
to pieces — and jna pauvre gaz^l!^ 'Monsieur,' my 
garde said, 'venez avec moi voir les animauxV I 
accompanied him to the stall. Madame! The cold 
extreme, the frost of a degree, was such, my horses, 
my dogs, my gaz'l were all togezzer in the stall! 
Ver' close, ver' close; serres — huddled, you would 
say in your language, so expressive. Yes, close to- 
gezzer, because they had been uncomfortable, apart ! 
Cold, apart! They, to be comfortable, to be warm, 
was togezzer. Madame, Democracy was bornF^ 

"Must we be uncomfortable to learn the meaning 
of the word?" I said. 

"Comfort has not taught you its meaning, in 
America," he said, smiling a little cynically. "You 
think you are a democracy? Dear Madame! it is 

114 



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in America an empty word. Many of you are com- 
fortable. Many, many of you are uncomfortable. 
Not so is the true democracy." 

"So, we must all suffer together.'^" I pon- 
dered. ... 

Before this belief that the Kingdom of Heaven 
may be brought about by pressure from the outside, 
how was one to say that when the roof was put back 
on the barn les animauo! would probably again squeal 
and nip and tear, and the smell of the gaz'l be as 
pronounced as ever.'* 

It is hardly necessary to say that the immense 
majority of people do not believe in this possibility 
of a revolution. They are waiting for victory — 
complete, complacent, vindictive victory! With no 
Gaston anywhere in it — except, indeed, as he has 
been privileged to help in bringing it about, by dying 
for his country. This comfortable certainty is held 
by people who have never felt the cold of the lifted 
roof, and to whom, consequently, huddling is quite 
unthinkable. They belong in the class with a gentle 
and very kindly woman in America who said to me 
some two or three years ago: 

"I am tired to death of all this talk about work- 
115 



SMALL THINGS 

ing-people. They never wash, and there's a great 
deal too much done for them, anyhow. All these 
tiresome girls' clubs! / say, let working-girls stay 
home with their mothers in the evenings, instead of 
running around to girls' clubs !" 

This is almost as far removed from the hope of 
"huddling" as a scene I remember in my childhood 
— a big, rocking, family carriage; two fat, strong 
horses, pulling over a terribly muddy Maryland 
road. I sat inside with a very majestic and rigid 
old lady with gray side curls, who never leaned back 
upon the ancient cushions. We were going, I think, 
to Hagerstown, to call on some other majestic old 
lady. As the coach pulled and tugged and I tum- 
bled about like a very small pea in a peck measure, 
we passed a group of school children, who drew 
aside to escape the splashing mud from the fetlocks 
of the fat horses. They didn't escape very much of 
it, and I can see now their looks of dismay at spotted 
aprons ; but the old lady did not notice the aprons. 
She frowned — and said : 

"Fy ! f y ! What are we coming to ? Not one of 
them bowed to us ! When I was young, children in 
their station, respected their betters. Where, where 

116 



BEADS 

shall we end?" she demanded, darkly. She, too, !iad 
never huddled. 

I remember pondering, as we sank into the muddy 
ruts, and tugged out to balance on precarious wheels 
before plunging down again : "Why should the chil- 
dren bow to her? She didn't bow to them." 

There is one more hope that a very, very few 
people feel; it is even more like Fear than the hope 
of the owner of the gaz'l. I heard it expressed by a 
little group of Americans, who thought, so some of 
them said, that the only certain way of ushering 
in the Kingdom of God was to refrain from ever 
putting the roof on the stable. "Let us all grow 
our own hair if we want to be warm!" said one 
of these vaguely speculating folk. 

In other words, let us return to the beginnings of 
things. This will be easy, because, the speaker said, 
we are seeing the end of a civilization which created 
the box-stall and is therefore responsible for the 
differentiation of comfort. "But it must be the 
whole hog," she went on ; "there is no half-way house 
on the road to regeneration. Gaston won't accom- 
plish it." 

This girl, her eyebrows gathering into a frown^ 
117 



SJ^IALL THINGS 

seemed to he trying to talk out her perplexities. 
Some one had said that Nationalism was responsible 
for the idea that population should be valued by 
quantity, not quahty; naturally, such a standard 
may not only contemplate polygamy, it may demand 
it. ^'Nationalism is the seed of war," this person said. 
^'Dulce et decorum is death for an ideal, but not for 
a geographical boundary. Christ died for the People, 
not for Nations. We must learn to think of our- 
selves, not as French or American or German, but 
just as we are born — poor, little, naked humans! 
When we do that the foolishness of war will end." 

But the Girl went further than that : "An Allied 
victory wiU just strengthen Nationalism," she said, 
"and, of course, there is going to be an Allied vic- 
tory! Must be, you know. I don't doubt it for a 
moment! We've simply got to win — only — some- 
times I — I wonder ..." 

"I wonder most all of the time," I confessed. 

"Isn't it possible," she said, slowly, "that if we 
just prop up Nationalism, we shall prop up for a 
little while longer this rotten thing that you call 
civilization? Is it worth while to do that.? Civili- 
zation is rotten; you can't deny it." 

118 



BEADS 

"I'm not denying it." 

"It is the expression of a debauched commercial- 
ism that has been squeezing the life out of — well, 
your friend Gaston's body and soul. Look at his 
nasty, wicked little body! Apparently he has no 
Soul. Your civilization, which is pure materialism, 
has done it." 

"I do wish you wouldn't call it mine," one of her 
hearers said. 

"It is yours ! You batten on it. You grind Gas- 
ton's bones to make your bread — " 

"Oh, come now!" 

*'I mean you draw your dividends," she said to 
the company at large; and some one protested, 
meekly : 

"Not very many, now, or very large ones." 

"That's not from any excess of virtue on your 
part," she said, sweetly. "I bet you, none of you 
ever objected to a melon yet. Well," she went on, 
frowning. "I know I am all balled up and going 
off on side-tracks, but what I'm trying to say is, 
that an Allied victory will only keep the civilization 
of materialism going a little while longer. I think 
M. Blank is right, and after our victory, will come 

119 



SMALL THINGS 

a period when we shall *huddle.' Then we shan't 
even huddle, for there will come a moment when 
the gaz'l will suddenly take the whole box-stall; 
and / shan't blame him! Civilization has created 
him, and it is he who has suffered the most from 
a war which he did not desire, and did not make, 
but only fought. When he gets the stall he will 
die in it, because it isn't Nature — Or turn into 
a horse, and then we'll have the whole business to do 
over again!" 

Some one said here, that her ideas on evolution 
would interest Darwin, but she did not notice the 
flippant interruption. 

"Isn't it possible," she said, "that, to get straight- 
ened out, to live, in fact, we've got, all of us, to get 
out into the open? Haven't we got to grow our 
own hair to keep warm? Yes, we must go farther 
than Gaston's revolution which every one is whisper- 
ing about; that will only be a piece of court-plaster 
on an ulcer. We will go the whole hog.'* 

This was too preposterous.? 

"You mean, a return to the primeval slime? 
Thank you ! I prefer the box-stall even if the gaz'l 
is of a smell." 

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BEADS 

"I don't think your preferences will be consulted.. 
But it does seem" — her face fell into painful lines 
of sincerity — "it really does seem that the sooner 
the smash of the whole damned thing comes the bet- 
ter. It isn't any easier to pull a tooth by degrees." 

(I may say that this thoughtful woman is a doc- 
tor, so her illustrations are natural enough.) 

"So that's why," she ended, quietly, "that some- 
times, I — I think I believe, that it will be better for 
Germany to win the war." 

There was an outcry at this, "Germany is the 
apotheosis of materialism!" 

"I know. It would be casting out devils by Beel- 
zebub, the Prince of Devils. But a German victory 
would ice the toboggan and get us down to the bot- 
tom more quickly." 

A ribald voice suggested that "ice" wouldn't last 
long in the place to which she seemed bent on send- 
ing us. But the girl was in too painful earnest to 
retort. 

"You bet," she said, "we'U drag Germany over the 
precipice with us. And, once at the bottom, we shall 
all begin to climb up again. But we must touch 

121 



SMALL THINGS 

bed-rock first. Bolshevism will wash us all down 
on to it." 

Everybody laughed, and, of course, nobody took 
her seriously; yet this, stripped of slang, is a thing 
for which, here and there, a very few people are 
**waiting." They are saying, carefully, with 
weighed words, something that confesses what this 
extravagant statement means. 

"Not even Gaston's surgery can better conditions 
that ought not to exist," they say. "We are at the 
end of our epoch. We must begin all over again." 

Of course, very few go as far as this. Very few 
can see any hope in anarchy. Very few have faith 
to believe that to save life it may be necessary to 
lose it. Gaston — who symbolizes a more or less 
orderly revolution, — is the boundary set by most 
of the dreamers. Those who do go farther believe, 
as this girl put it, that an Allied victory will be 
only a temporary uplifting ; that even Gaston would 
be but a palliative; and that it is better, not only 
for France, but for Western civilization, to get to 
the bottom as quickly as possible. 

*'Don't prolong the agony by defeating Germany," 
one of them said. But whether victory comes, bring- 

122 



BEADS 

ing a Peace such as we knew before 1914 — com- 
placent, selfish, materialistic ! or whether we are to 
know defeat, Gaston, they say, will have his say. 
Under his star there will be, perforce, some huddling ; 
and dogs and horses and gaz'l will be quite sure that 
they are going to live happily for evermore. . . . 
But after that, the dark. And after that, the dawn ! 

It is a Hope. Very far off, perhaps, but a 
Hope. The hope of the upward curve of the spiral 
after it has dipped into the primeval. Back again, 
these people say, to the beginnings of things, must 
go our miserable little civilization. Back to some 
bath of realities, to wash us clean of an unreality 
which has mistaken geographical boundaries for 
spiritual values, and mechanics for God. Then, up — • 
up^ — up^ — towards the singing heights ! 

"We will find God," the crystal beads declare. 
Not in our time, perhaps; perhaps not even in the 
time of our children; but sometime. "The processes 
of God are years and centuries." 

And as I write, the guns are trained on Paris. . . . 



123 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

WE had had our marching orders for "Some- 
where," but the morning before we left 
Paris, I said (it being our first "day out" 
after about five weeks of uninterrupted dish-wash- 
ing and cocoa-making), "let's go and see the tomb 
of the High Priest of War," or words to that effect. 
It seemed fitting for us, who are just tagging along 
behind the army, to do this, because, except for 
Napoleon, we probably wouldn't be tagging. It was 
he who put the match to some invisible fuse which, 
smoldering through the years — ^breaking out once in 
a while in a brief sputter of flames, really blazing in 
1870, showing sparks at Agadir, finally, in 1914, 
reaching the powder magazine — seems now to be 
blowing up the whole world. But the curious thing 
is, that with all the unpleasantness of being blown 
up (and it is very unpleasant!), we queer, incon- 
venienced human creatures continue to worship at 

124 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

the shrine of the man who is so largely responsible 
for the explosion! 

It was Sunday, and all the world was "endi- 
Tnanche'^ — dressed in its best clothes, which, if one 
does not look at them too closely, seem about as fine 
as ever. Certainly as chic as ever, even though 
many, many frocks are black, and almost all are 
worn, and of distressingly shoddy material. Yes, the 
clothes were very chic! — except the faded blue uni- 
forms, and for some of us these dirty, faded, blue 
coats had a chic-ness all of their own. I know they 
moved me more than the smart, clean khaki of our 
own boys, who were very much in evidence that Sun- 
day afternoon, strolling along the boulevards in the 
pale February sunshine, all going apparently in the 
direction of the Tomb. And why not ? The High 
Priest, on the pages of history had put the worship 
of his god into their hearts as well as into the hearts 
of the men in blue; so, naturally, on their few days* 
pause in Paris before going to the front, they 
thronged to his shrine. . . , 

But so far as worship went, I noticed a difference 
in the faces of the worshipers ; those of the French- 
men were dull; those of the Americans were very 

125 



SMALL THINGS 

eager, alert, full of preposterous American fun, and 
of a joyous curiosity about everything, especially 
about the things in the Cour d'Honneur — that great 
open space round whose four sides the Hotel des 
Invalides is built. 

These Things catch the eye as soon as one enters 
the Court: guns — guns — guns. (I don't know 
enough to give their proper names ; they all look 
equally evil and ingenious to me.) And with the 
captured guns were wrecked German aeroplanes, 
torpedoes, gun carriages — the wheels hub-deep with 
mud from enslaved Belgium; French Red Cross 
ambulances, their covers torn by German bul- 
lets which had sought the dying to ensure their 
death. The great Court was full of these things, and 
among them our men lounged about, laughing and 
joking and staring, their gay, keen eyes full of rev- 
erence for the god whose sacramental vessels were 
here collected. (I wondered if our lads ever thought 
of the Wine those vessels are holding to-day to the 
lips of Humanity!) 

Among these trophies moved also the French! 
people — little bearded men in blue, accompa- 
nied by wives and mothers and children (these 

126 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

last rather pallid — there is enough bread over here, 
but somehow it does not feed us ; "it doesn't stick to 
your ribs," little Sylvia said). The women, "endi- 
manche^^ and the peaked, shrill children — the little 
boys' legs between the knickers and short stockings, 
purple with cold — hung upon the arms or clung to 
the hands of the tired, shabby soldiers, who led them 
about to see the machine guns and all the other 
sacred vessels. There was much feminine chatter, 
much high-pitched nervous laughter, that mingled 
with rollicking American voices ; but through it all, 
the French soldiers, patient and kindly, leading their 
women about to see the sights, were singularly si- 
lent. They were detached, to a degree that was a 
little startling. At first, I thought it was only that 
my eyes had happened to rest upon one or another 
particularly tired husband or lover, but as, looking 
down from the gallery that runs around four sides 
of the Court, I watched the good-humored, jostling 
crowd that was moving among the captured cannon 
and planes, I saw that practically all the men in 
blue had this air of remoteness. They were doing 
their part here, just as they had done their part 
in the trenches. There, they had been ready to give 

in 



SMALL THINGS 

their lives for their women and children; here, they 
were giving their poor little moments of rest on leave 
to something which did not seem to interest them, 
but which did interest these same women and chil- 
dren. I could hear the incessant feminine ques- 
tioning : 

"Qu'est-ce que c'est que ceciF' 
'Tourquoi cela est-U casse?** 
"Comment y a-t-il de la boue la^-dessusr' 
The blue soldiers' replies were given with a curi- 
ously bored look. I could see that even the men who 
were by themselves, and wandered aimlessly about, 
or those accompanied by girls — girls with deadly 
white powdered faces and very red lips, (poor, 
tragic, bad little butterflies!) — all had this same ab- 
sent expression. Perhaps when they looked at the 
great, stretching, flower-garlanded, flag-decked 
wings of the aeroplane on which their own hero, Guy- 
nemer, sailed to a triumphant death, dragging with 
him into Eternity I don't know how many German 
aviators, their eyes did brighten into some kind of 
attention; but most of the time they were unin- 
terested. 

It was very puzzling. 

128 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

As we went into the palace itself, I thought very 
much about the quality of indifference in the French 
soldiers' faces, and wondered if I was only imagining 
it — one finds one's imagination running rather craz- 
ily over here. So I watched them when we reached 
the balcony from which one looks down into the 
shrine itself, the crypt, in the center of which is the 
tomb — covered, now, as it happens, by sandbags. 
There is a sinister significance in those sandbags. 
The crypt lies directly under the great dome of the 
Invalides, and a bomb from a German plane, falling 
on that dome, would strike the French heart with a 
terrible effectiveness. So we could not see the tomb 
itself, but only the piled sandbags and the guard- 
ing caryatids supporting the balcony, each sym- 
bolizing a great victory, their worshiping marble 
eyes watching always the sarcophagus which holds 
the little heap of glorious dust — ^his worshipers 
call it "glorious." A constant crowd hung over 
the balustrade of the gallery, and I could see 
those uninterested faces of the French soldiers; 
sometimes a powdered cheek brushed a blue shoulder, 
and a high-pitched "0, la! la!" expressed disap- 
pointment at the concealing sandbags. Our boys 

129 



SMALL THINGS 

were there, too, staring down into the crypt, their 
careless eyes seeing everything, and understanding 
almost nothing. 

We went into the chapel for a moment, where the 
queer writhing pillars, like enormous black marble 
corkscrews, stand on each side of the altar, which 
is flooded with the blue light from the dome, and sur- 
rounded by much tawdry and theatrical magnifi- 
cence, all of which would have delighted the little 
great vulgarian down in the crypt. It is an ironic 
thing, this chapel of the Prince of Peace, here, close 
beside the bones of Napoleon ! I did not notice that 
the French soldiers displayed before this altar either 
piety or reverence; which pleased me, for the con- 
junction of ideas made the painful question of the 
success of the Christian Church at this particular 
moment in the history of the world, rise again in my 
mind. Many people are asking this question just 
how. A little fat innkeeper answered it thus : "Ma- 
dame," said he, *'is of an intelligence? She is aware 
that France is not a religious nation?" I disclaimed 
any special intelligence, but said I had heard as 
much. "The church," said he, "pouf ! it is nothing ! 
I say to my children when they came out of the 

130 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

trenches (I call them all my children), 'Mes enfants,' 
I say, Vhat of religion?' And they say to me 'Pouf 1' 
But, Madame! by this war, our men have come 
to believe in God, — and disbeheve in man. No 
more — no more will they have a man who calls him- 
self a Priest, stand between them and God!" He 
looked at me with suddenly luminous eyes: "There 
is no necessity. The French people know God, and 
need not to be introduced to Him." Perhaps that 
knowledge may sometime destroy the worship of Na- 
poleon's god. . . . 

By and by, we strayed into the Museum, where 
the relics of the first Emperor are kept — the cocked 
hat, the little camp bed, its faded green canopy 
dropping into tatters under the weight of more than 
a hundred years; even his war horse, stuffed, poor 
Visier ! — the hair worn from his old nose by the pat- 
tings of thousands of passing hands ; and the woolly 
white dog (who was with him, I think, at St, 
Helena), also stuffed, and quite the noblest and 
most human thing among all these dusty, decaying 
memorials of "glory." But here, as in the Cowr, 
— it was only the American man and the French 
woman who displayed interest. The French soldiers 

131 



SMALL THINGS 

seemed to be patiently bored. Sometimes they 
yawned, and two or three strolled back to the gal- 
lery overlooking the Court, and leaning on the stone 
balustrade stared absently up at the soft blue sky, 
which had little wisps of white clouds drawn like 
veils across its tender depths. 

"What on earth !" I said to myself, "is the matter 
with the French men?" 

We speculated about it as we walked home in the 
fading afternoon lights — across Pont Alexandre III 
that spans the brown current of the Seine, through 
the Place de la Concorde, past the Obelisque that 
marks the spot where Marie Antoinette and the 
Autocratic Idea in France died together on the scaf- 
fold. The streets were full of people cheerful and 
chattering, or vaguely silent; there were many 
American soldiers among them, swaggering along, 
quite comfortable in hearing from each other, only 
their own language^ — which made me think of some- 
thing that was said in our canteen : "Some of us can 
talk their lingo to the Frenchies ; I learned it in our 
high school — but they canH understand it! Can you 
beat it.f* You talk their own lingo to 'em, and they 
don't get on to it!" 

132 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

"The French people is slow," a boy said, oracu- 
larly. 

"Well, I've no use for these here foreign lan- 
guages," another soldier said impatiently. "They'd 
ought to learn 'em in their schools to speak so as 
you could understand 'em." 

Compared to the blue-coated men, our lads seemed 
so interested and eager, and so satisfied with every- 
thing! — their own lingo and even the war — "We'U 
settle this hash for 'em!" 

There was nothing remote about the American 
soldiers ! 

When we reached the Madeleine, which lifted its 
serene facade of time-blackened, rain-washed marble 
against the violet dusk, I was so puzzled that I said 
to myself, "I'll go and ask somebody who knows, 
what the very obvious 'remoteness' in the French 
soldier means." 

So that was how it came about that I found myself 
at a charming and hospitable French fireside which 
was endlessly patient with my French (which was 
doubtless of the high-school type) and very enlight- 
ening to my bewildered American mind. 

"Why are they so uninterested.? Do I imagine 
133 



SMALL THINGS 

it, or are they really " I paused to find a word. 

" — not here?" my hostess finished for me. "Yes, 
you are right, Madame, they are not here. There are 
other reasons, too; their life in the trenches is of a 
dullness — it is to bore. You would say 'bore'? But 
for many, very many, it is something else. And 
that is why they are — away. They are with . . . 
things we do not see. Things they do not speak 
of." 

Her voice dropped on those last words and she 
was silent for a minute. "It would not make us — ' 
their wives and mothers and sweethearts — ^happier 
if they told us what they see — always, always — in 
the back of their minds. When they come home on 
leave — these men who are of a temperament — they 
endeavor to forget it. They go to see the sights, 
oh yes! They rush to the cinemas — you have seen 
them?" 

Yes, I had seen them standing in the rain, crowds 
of them, waiting for the doors to open, always with 
their women pressing close to them, 

"They go to laugh. They want to laugh," she 
said. "But some of them laugh — with du bout des 
levres,^^ She paused, and stared into the fire. 

134 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

"If they could only #aZAr," she said ; "talk of what 
they have seen! Then they could forget. But no. 
They spare us. They will not save themselves that 
way — our men!" Her gray head lifted, proudly. 
"Only once has my son let me see what was in his 
heart ; by accident, Madame ; hardly six words . . ." 

Perhaps she saw in my eyes the question I could 
not ask, for she went on, very simply, and with a 
directness that was poignant. (I think people are 
more direct now than they used to be. Life is too 
terrible for the old futilities of words — mere "polite 
noises," as H. G. Wells calls the conventionalities of 
conversation, don't count for much when cannon 
are booming.) 

"Once, yes, my boy revealed to me — something. 
Me! His mother! Who would have taken into my 
own bosom all his pain! He was taking his men 

from to , but he, himself, was able to 

make the detour of a moment to stop here, in Paris, 
to kiss me. Then he proceeded with his men. Ma- 
dame, I wish you could have seen him. He was of a 
joyousness! And so well! Robust, young — " Her 
eyes shone as she tried to tell me of the overflowing 
manliness and vigor of the boy who paused in his 

135 



SMALL THINGS 

hurrying march to the trenches, to kiss his mother. 
"Young, and of a beauty!" 

"Madame will please observe the date ? It was the 
fifteenth of December. I was even then planning for 
him a cadeau de Noel. It was quite simple to get it 
through to him, for he was not in the firing line. 
Oh — ^just a pudding of plums, and bonbons, and — 
what you would send your boy ! He is truly a boy," 
she said, with a little shrug that made the diamonds 
on her thin old hands twinkle in the firelight. (I am 
pretty sure that it was hospitality to a chilly Amer- 
ican that had lighted a fire on the too-often-cold 
hearth.) "He wrote to me, Madame, on the evening 
of Christmas a letter most gay. You will observe 
the date: December S5th. Oh, yes, a letter tres 
amusante — of how he and his friends feasted on the 
pudding of plums, and many things that a boy likes ; 
ah, boys are greedy!" she scolded lovingly, her face 
all maternal satisfaction in the childishness of her 
man in the trench. "So I was at ease about my son. 
He was making his duty, but he was not on the 
firing line. So I was at ease, Madame. On New 
Year's Day — that is our great Day in France, 
greater than Christmas — I made a little fete; oh, 

136 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

not really a fete, as before the War; just my two 
daughters and the parents of my son-in-law, who 
is also at the front. But I had a fowl, and a pudding 
of plums, so I say *fete.' Just before we were to 
proceed to the dining-room the bell sounded — ^I 
myself opened the door. A strange man stood there. 
I did not know this man. He was mud, mud to 
here" — she laid her hand across her breast — "his 
face was of a whiteness — ^his cheeks were gone — 
his cheeks were melted away! His eyes — ^his 
terrible eyes ! I did not know this man. He 
was my son. . . , He entered and looked about him. 
He said, *You are en fete.' I said, 'No ! Only our 
relations.' My son would not speak. He was silent. 
He came into the salle-a-manger and sat with us at 
table, silent. He did not even wash! My boy, — 
whose first movement when he had returned on leave 
was always to the bathtub! Madame, he sat there 
in his mud without speech. He forgot his mother," 
she ended simply; and did not speak for a little 
while. ... 

"Before he left me he said — something — ^hardly 
six words ! But when he got back to the trenches — 
he wrote and asked me to forgive him for his silence. 

137 



SMALL THINGS 

He said *I found you en fete,* (Madame, it was, I 
assure you, only the fowl and the pudding.) 'I did 
not speak, Maman,' he said; *I was unjust. For- 
give me.' He then explained to me, Madame, that 
when he wrote to me on Christmas night of their 
feast, he was then en train to go to the firing line, 
but he would not tell me, naturellement T^ (Again 
there was the proud shrug, and the twinkle of dia- 
monds.) "But between that night and the night 
when he came back to me, and I did not know him, 
he had been in the trench four days and four nights, 
without food. Yes, his cheeks had melted away! 
He and his company could not withdraw from the 
trench, because of the German barrage. They could 
not advance — for No Man's Land lay before them. 
And in No Man's Land, under their eyes, all those 
four days and nights, he saw . . ." 

She was silent, and I knew she was seeing what 
those dear, dazed, boyish eyes had looked at for 
ninety-six hours. Then she said, in a whisper, "and 
he heard . . ." 

Again she could not speak. By and by in a low 
voice, she went on. "That is why the Poilus are 
'absent.' Constantly they see and hear — what never 

138 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

should be seen or heard on earth ! They may go to 
the cinemas — ^where it is to laugh; but do you think 
captured machine guns could interest them? My 
boy said to me, because of things he saw in his mind, 
'Maman, I could not look at you, en fete.^ Oh, 
Madame, you will know it was not really a fete? 
Just the poulet. . . ." 

After a while I poked my way back through the 
dark streets (there had been an air raid a night or 
two before, and all Paris walked in darkness). I 
felt my way along, lighted by glimmers from the 
feeble lamps of occasional passing taxis, and I said 
to myself that there are many varieties of courage 
in this magnificent bad old world of ours, and one 
of them is the courage that will take wife and child 
and sweetheart to see those instruments of dull hor- 
ror which have their own significance for eyes which 
have stared into No Man's Land, and seen things 
which the women cannot see, and must not be made 
to understand. So the boy who loved candy and 
plum pudding and made the detour to "kiss Maman," 
held his tongue as to what was going to happen after 
the Christmas feast, and so kept that mother, in 
Paris, "at ease." And he was able (the he is generic 

139 



SMALL THINGS 

this time) to take his sweetheart to see the guns and 
aeroplanes and answer patiently her crowding ques- 
tions. The trophies did not interest him — ^but they 
did not shock him by any sharp contrast with his life. 
He was used to them. But the little fete was a shock. 
And so he "sat down in his mud; he washed not; he 
did not eat; he did not speak." He was not there. 

And yet we go on — we strange human creatures! 
admiring Napolean, the supreme expression of this 
terrible Irrationality called War, which so blasts the 
eyes of some of our young men that they are bored 
by the merely pleasant things of life. I suppose some 
day the Race will regard the symbols of the worship 
of War with astonished and pitying amusement. It 
will keep them in museums as it does now — but not 
as signs of "glory," only as curiosities which illus- 
trate the childhood of mankind, just as to-day the 
rusty racks and thumbscrews in museums illustrate 
our childishness, and illustrate, too, how far, far 
removed from Christ was a Christianity which 
fancied religion could be achieved by force! 

But, of course, to hasten the age of reason — the 
time when "war" shall be a curiosity of history, this 
particular irrationality in which we are now en- 

140 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

gaged, which a wicked and childish Germany has 
thrust upon the world, must be gone through with, 
must be fought out by the (comparatively) adult 
nations. They must tie the crazy hands which have 
set fire to things. Crazy hands, which are malicious- 
ly mischievous, and which do this sort of thing: (I 
quote from a report issued by the British Govern- 
ment of "The Transport of British Prisoners of War 
to Germany." It contains the statements and depo- 
sitions of forty-eight officers and seventy-seven non- 
commissioned officers and men, who, wounded, fell 
into the hands of the enemy.) 

"At Liege," says Captain Hargreaves, "I tried to 
get the German Red Cross officials to give our wound- 
ed men water — they refused. . . . I saw some nurses 
bring water in cans up to our men, show it to them, 
and then pour it on the platform." And again: 
"German officers allowed troops to strike a convoy of 
wounded with sabers and bayonets, and to kick their 
crutches from under the arms of cripples." And 
here is another: "Sometimes when food was given 
it was in most loathsome manner; thus, one small 
jug of soup was allowed to a whole carriage of 
wounded, and this soup was useless, as it was put 

141 



SMALL THINGS 

into the jug used for urinating." These things read 
like pathological reports of degenerate children! . . 
So we are here in France, we Americans in khaki, 
to do our somewhat belated part in stopping this 
particular degeneration, and then to relegate War 
to the Records of History, which will tell such stories 
as these I have quoted as illustrations of the ar- 
rested development of a nation. 

We are not all of us in khaki. Some of us wear 
blue, and have red crosses or triangles on our sleeves 
and hats — but petticoats are part of this uniform. 
The Yankee boys, most of them, salute the Y. M. 
C. A. petticoats, and the wearers acknowledge it by a 
nod and smile. I wish you could see these girls play- 
ing at Militarism — it is really very charming! But 
I have to admit that military discipline breaks down 
once in a while when it interferes with personal pref- 
erences, as for instance: "I hate all this rowing 
about punctuality !" a girl says. "What does it mat- 
ter if I am five minutes late at the canteen?" 

Some of us were talking about the impatience of 
the average American woman with anything like 
discipline, and one extremely military woman broke 

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NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

in, frowning, "The trouble is there are too many of 
us over here!" 

"You have it in your power to lessen the number 
by one," some one remarked sweetly — it was the 
sweetness of that translucent confection called at 
home a lemon drop. 

But another worker shook her head, "There are 
not enough of us over here !" she said. 

The fact is, both of these statements are as true as 
they are contradictory. "Send us some more women 
workers !" cries one relief organization or another. 

"For God's sake, keep these girls at home!" cries 
a distracted official. He clutched his gray hair as he 
spoke — but the gesture was too sincere to be funny. 

The explanation of the contradiction is simple 
enough. Of course there are always, everywhere, too 
many inefficient people: "Keep them at home!" the 
relief committees implore us. 

"No," says America. "We don't want them." 

Of course there are not at any time, anywhere, 
enough efficient people : 

"Send us some, for heaven's sake, send us some!" 
say the Y. M. C. A. and the Red Cross. 

143 



SMALL THINGS 

"No," says America. "We need them at home, 
— never more than now." 

So America keeps all she can of the best (fortun- 
ately she can't keep all), and lets the second or third 
best slip through the sieve of the War Office's require- 
ments in the way of passports. As a result, there 
are among the hard-working, level-headed, inexpress- 
ibly useful relief workers, a number of lazy, frivolous,, 
unconscientious persons, who eat the scanty bread of 
France and render no equivalent in labor for her 
soldiers or for the soldiers of her allies. 

"I wish I could charter the Lusitania and ship 
'em all back to the port she came from," an observer 
said. There was a shocked protest; but the state- 
ment was not withdrawn. 

"You know perfectly well that these women are 
not wanted in heaven or on earth !" 

"But do draw the line at the waters under the 
earth," I plead, — not too earnestly, for I know the 
kind of person who roused the protest. 

Yet one ought not to j oke about it ; the situation 
over here is too grave for joking, and, besides, the 
joke seems to ignore the other side — the side of effi- 
ciency and unselfishness. When I think of some of 

144 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

the workers, both men and women, whom I have been 
privileged to meet, workers whose devotion, self-sacri- 
fice, and consecration are obvious to everybody, I am 
filled with admiration and humility. 

*'I take ofi" my hat to these girls !" a civilian said, 
with positive emotion. 

In one of the canteens I heard an equally sincere 
tribute to a Y. M. C. A. man (he is too delicate to be 
in the trenches). This "secretary" had danced with 
the boys and played checkers, and sung, "Hail, Hail, 
the Gang's All Here !" until he was pale with fatigue. 
It was then that one of the Regulars, drinking cocoa 
at my counter, noticed him, and punched the man in 
front of him in the ribs : 

"Say," he said, "d'ye see that little red-haired 
feller over there? Name's Jerry. Well, look a-here, 
that feller is a great felhr." 

And here is a tribute to some of the older women. 
It came from a boy, fresh- faced, clear-eyed, just 
from Indiana and ready for any kind of monkey- 
shines, bless his heart ! "These ladies," he said — and 
suddenly his young lip quivered — "why, sometimes I 
— I feel just like putting my arms around 'em and 
hugging 'em like I would my mother." 

145 



SMALL THINGS 

I quote these things only to show that though I 
understand the feelings of the gentleman who wanted 
to charter the Lusitania, I know, also, that if we 
could charter another vessel to duplicate some of the 
men and women who are here already, poor, ex- 
hausted France would be glad to share her black 
bread with them, and thousands of American soldiers 
would be ready to "hug 'em like they would their 
mothers," or, if they were too young for that, show 
them snapshots of their "girls" at home ; or, if they 
were of their own sex, slap them on the small of the 
back, and say, "Hello, old top!" 

There are men and women in the Y. M. C. A. 
and the Red Cross, whose nobility fill one with hope 
for this poor crazy world; they are expressing in 
their lives the only thing that can save civilization: 
the idealism of Jesus, — which is not always the thing 
that calls itself Christianity. Sometimes I think 
Christ would not recognize that as His own. Yes; 
there are splendid workers here. . . . But there are 
others: 

There are arrogant, small-minded men who squab- 
ble about creeds; men who can see the religion of 
Jesus at a prayer meeting, but cannot see it in a 

146 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

dance or a football game, men who ought themselves 
to be in the trenches. And there are flirtatious, in- 
consequent, selfish girls, who lap up the excitement 
of the world as kittens lap cream, girls who ought to 
be at home doing immediate and homely duties. To 
illustrate, I think I will tell some stories ( only about 
the women ; I will leave the criticism of the men who 
ought to be put on the Lusitania, to one of their own 
sex) : 

My first story is of something that happened in 
Paris. A schedule of hours for duty was made out 
by the head of a department in one of the relief 
organizations (not the Y. M. C. A.). I happen to 
know that it was made with painstaking considera- 
tion and an effort to spare the women as much of 
the inevitable fatigue of the work (which they had 
volunteered to do!) as possible. The schedules were 
handed out — and received in grim silence. For a 
day or two the gloom was very deep. Then at last, 
some one spoke up: 

"We don't like these hours. We prefer others. 
These you have assigned to us are the best for sight- 
seeing and shopping." 

Sight-seeing ! Now! While France is holding out 
147 



SMALL THINGS 

trembling hands to us! "Sight-seeing?" said an 
ambulance driver. "Fd cure them of that sort of 
thing by showing them a 'sight' or two !" 

"What, for instance?" I said. 

"Well," she said, "I just happened to think of the 
shelling of some old people; oh, so old, so poor, so 
trembling ! We went to pick them up and carry them 
out of the danger zone ; and — and they shooJc so with 
fright. One old woman of ninety-six tried to climb 
into my ambulance. ... If those sight-seers could 
see a sight like that, I bet they'd lose their interest 
in cathedrals and things !" 

Here is another story : "You are working on surgi- 
cal dressings, aren't you?" a girl was asked. "No, I 
signed up for that, because it was the only way I 
could get over. But I don't like that kind of thing, 
it isn't interesting. I'm going to the front. I'm just 
crazy to be on the firing line !" 

And again : Miss A. is to relieve Miss B. in a can- 
teen at two p. M. She arrives at four. . . . "Oh, I'm 
awfully sorry. I didn't mean to be late, but I had 
such lots to do !" And still another : Miss C. is to go 
on duty in a canteen at two, for the afternoon. That 
means she is to make ten or twelve gallons of cocoa, 

148 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

wash cups and saucers, sell cigarettes or soap or 
chewing gum or what not — to one or two hundred 
men. It is rapid, exhausting, pleasant, valuable 
work, but there is not a minute's pause in it. At six, 
Miss D. arrives to relieve Miss C, and go on duty 
herself until 11 :30. She finds the sink piled high 
with unwashed cups and saucers, the big cocoa con- 
tainer absolutely empty, the men sitting about grim- 
ly, unfed and unserved. She also finds the "worker" 
writing letters at one of the canteen tables. 

"Ah!" she says, looking up cheerfully, "I've had 
such a nice afternoon, writing home !" 

Now what is the matter with the sight-seers, and 
Miss A. and Miss C? They all came over to France 
to help. They really wanted to help. What is the 
trouble with them? Isn't it this? They are behav- 
ing as they have behaved at home, namely: exactly 
as they please. 

Their idea of being military goes no further than 
the soldier's salute ; it does not include obedience and 
self-elimination. Of course there may be, in some 
of these "undesirables," some fundamental flaw of 
character; but I think that, generally speaking, this 
lamentable behavior comes only from a lack of uhder- 

149 



SMALL THINGS 

standing of the situation over here. They have not 
taken in the terrible gravity of what has happened, 
is happening, and will happen. Instead of this reali- 
zation they feel the excitement of a new experience, 
and the chance to be important. 

Anxious, hard-worked people over here have been 
saying, "How ca/n we keep such women away from 
France?" They are the houches inutiles, — they 
are not wanted. But, curiously enough, they seem 
particularly anxious to come ! How can they be 
kept in America? (Where no one particularly hank- 
ers for their society, but where at least they have a 
right to be — they have no right to be in France!) 
An age limit has been suggested; but that will not 
sieve them out. Neither efficiency nor consecration 
is decided by years. I have seen just as many rath- 
er ailing, foolish women in the fifties who want excite- 
ment and mean to write letters home to their clubs 
about war work, as lazy girls in the twenties who 
pant for "the Front." And, also, I have seen girls 
hardly twenty years old, filled with a passion of un- 
selfish service which puts us older women to shame. 

As far as efficiency goes, one method has occurred 
to me: Why do not the relief organizations here 

150 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

refuse to accept any woman who has not been tried 
out at home in the same kind of work — and for a 
sufficient length of time to prove her quality ? There 
is plenty of work in America in which workers can 
be considered as "probationers." For efficiency, this 
would be a pretty good test, but efficiency is not 
enough. The spirit of the worker must be questioned. 
First of all, let the woman, middle-aged or young, 
who wants to come over here, face the fact that her 
personality/ will be of no consequence to anybody 
except as she is useful. Then let her understand that 
usefulness means unremitting drudgery, exactness as 
to detail, prompt obedience, and no remarks about 
her own likes and dislikes! (That, for an American 
girl, "is some stunt," said Edith.) She must he zvUl- 
mg to he unimportant, in her own eyes. She must 
not be like the second-rate actresses who complain 
that they "can't see themselves in the part;" she 
must see herself in any part ! She must be prepared 
to be tired, and to be bored — (which is much worse 
than being tired!). She must stand at attention to 
do office work, or kitchen work, or stupid work, or 
dangerous work. In fact these requirements of the 
Spirit are only the old requirements of Life — life at 
. 151 



SMALL THINGS 

home or at school or in the office or shop or hos- 
pital. Let the girl who wants to come over here ask 
herself how she has met Life where she is ? If she has 
not been able to see the Heavenly Vision in washing 
dishes and helping her mother, she will not be apt to 
see it in what she may be told to do here. Let her 
think this over very carefully: If the organization 
under whose orders she wants to work puts her to the 
uninteresting drudgery of making a card catalogue, 
she must not say, as one girl did, "How perfectly 
beastly! I might as well be in America! I didn't 
come over here to do that sort of stunt. I want 
to go to the Front." 

"You'll want to do what you are told, or clear 
out!" the hard-pressed official thought, but did not 
say. Which was a pity, for candor might have help- 
ed this young woman, who was not really mean, only 
unimaginative and, consequently, selfish. This is the 
kind of girl to whom France and the American army 
says, "Don't come!" 

But if a girl can say, soberly and without self-con- 
ceit, "Yes, I can forget myself; I can be glad to be 
only a cog in the wheel" — then the Living Creature 

152 



NAPOLEON— AND OTHERS 

who is the center of all the wheels of this terrible 
and solemn time, will use the cog, and will justify 
its little existence ! 

To the woman who can so consecrate herself, her 
soul and body, and hold her tongue as to her own 
preferences, France and the relief organizations say 
"Come!" And I know certain strained and anxious 
men and women who will add, "and God bless 
you." 

So this is why it is that those contradictory state- 
ments about the workers over here are both true; 
there are too many of us, and there are too few of us ! 

This paper is an appeal to the Few — in America. 
It is to say to the Right Kind — Come ! Come 1 Come ! 

And may my country forgive me for picking her 
pocket of what she needs so much herself! I would 
not do it if I did not know that the need of France 
is greater than the need of America. Besides, Ameri- 
ca can keep the wrong kind — and reform them. 



VI 

THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

ISN'T it queer," said Edith, "how things waltz 
around? It's an everlasting 'swing your part- 
ner'! Things you thought were big, are so 
little you can't see 'em!" 

Which makes me think of a story : 
Winter before last, one of the acute questions in 
France was fuel, — and in a certain delightful apart- 
ment in Paris an American baby was sick with pneu- 
monia. There was no coal for the little household, 
literally none — and no begging or borrowing (or 
stealing) could secure any — and the chill of 
Paris in winter can only be appreciated by people 
who hare felt it ! In Paris, when it is no lower than 
thirty-two, the cold penetrates to your bones. Think 
of that, and then think of this baby, its little head 
bending sideways like a flower fading on its stalk, 
and its tiny hands hot with fever; and then think of 
the fireless fireplace. . . . Well, for one long, ter- 

154i 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

rible day the father split and chopped up the dining- 
room chairs, to keep a blaze (which meant a baby's 
life) chuckling and dancing on the hearth. The little 
thing got well, but the agony of those hours left its 
traces on the mother's face. Yet once upon a time 
this young mother had been rather fond of those 
dining-room chairs. . . . 

^'Gracious Peter!" said Sylvia, listening, her eyes 
as big as saucers, to this tale. "To think that there 
ever was a time when I fussed about things !" 

I don't know anybody who fusses less than the 
speaker; but she expressed the astonishment which, 
when we hear stories like this, we all begin to feel 
about our past — for we are, we Americans in France, 
people with a "Past!" In that Past, there were 
certain things that seemed to us important. For 
instance, a good night's sleep ; or whether we were 
treated with proper respect; or the bad manners of 
the modern girl. In this new Present, of smoke, and 
terror, and hatred, and the Shadow of Death, those 
"important" things are so completely blotted from 
our horizon that we can hardly believe that we ever 
gave them a thought! Now, if a shutter bangs in 
a high wind and keeps us awake, instead of "fussing" 

155 



SMALL THINGS 

we think of quiet, pleasant folk (the kind of people 
we are ourselves;) flung suddenly, neck and crop, 
out of their own houses to sleep as best they may 
under hedges or by roadsides. If a street car con- 
ductor isn't as polite as he might be, instead of 
resenting it, we think of a group of French prisoners, 
obliged to walk in front of their captors and, to the 
accompaniment of roars of German laughter, "kicked 
from behind," each step of the way. If our daughters 
don't behave as we did when we were their age, we 
think of girls, just as sweet and silly and pretty as 
our girls, put into cattle cars and taken off to work 
for the Germans on war-devastated fields (or to wish 
that they might have been given such work — or 
death!). Yes, we have to admit, that there was a 
time in America when intelligent women were troubled 
if a new dress wrinkled between the shoulders, or if 
there was not enough butter in the mashed potatoes ! 
. . . Over here, where there are very few new dresses 
and practically no butter for the potatoes, we don't 
like to remember that time. 

The fact is, so far have we traveled from those 
little days of "fussing," that we have reached, many 

156 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

of us, a foothill of the Delectable Mountains, the 
name of which is Shame. 

In other words, little things and big things have 
"waltzed round," and we have developed a sense of 
proportion which is bringing with it a knowledge of 
Values. ^ I don't mean of cost; I judge from letters 
from my native land that most Americans have of 
late acquired a pretty practical knowledge of the 
cost of a good many things ! But whether we have 
been instructed as to their Values, I have not been 
told. 

Instruction came to me in a certain little town in 
southern France. 

Girdled by the white serenities of the Alps, its 
stucco houses with blue shutters bask sleepily in the 
silence of streets through which come, sometimes, 
ox-teams, bringing loads of wood to be burned in 
fireplaces so constructed that most of the heat goes 
up the chimney. Once in a while, a Red Cross am- 
bulance (with a girl driver) comes honking along; or 
a United States band marches by tooting and bang- 
ing, escorting boys in khaki — here on their precious 
leave of eight days — up to the Y. M. C. A. Relief 
Post. When this martial sound wakes the somno- 

157 



SMALL THINGS 

lence of the streets all the little girls in clacking 
wooden shoes, and all the little boys, barelegged and 
black-aproned, run out to see "Z^5 Americains.^' But 
most of the time the place is silent. I sat down on 
a bench in the sunshine and looked at three French 
soldiers who were also enjoying the March warmth; 
(one had crutches beside him, the head of one was 
wrapped in swathes of white linen — I could not see 
his eyes; the third was sunken and bent, as if he 
tried not to pull on some unseen, slowly healing 
wound). As I sat there in the sun, and watched 
the silent men opposite me, I fell to thinking how 
patient they were; and that made me think of the 
patience of the French people and how little com- 
plaint there is among them — over things about which 
we "fuss" at home; and I said to myself that, in 
more than fifty blessed years of peace, we have, as 
a nation, so educated ourselves in comfort, that 
complaints about discomfort are quite the ordinary 
thing with us. 

"We kick," said Edith. 

But the things at which the French people donH 
kick! . . . The absence of bathtubs, for instance. 

158 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

"They don't mind if they haven't a bathtub with 
hot and cold running water!" 

"That's because they are not as clean a people 
as we are." 

"Perhaps," some one suggested darkly, "we are 
too clean?" 

"No," said the brutally candid member of the 
A. A. S., "we are just too darned particular; that's 
the trouble with us! We don't like to get along 
without things. You'd think, to hear us talk about 
plumbing, at home, that cleanliness was godliness, 
whereas it's only next door." 

"Oh, well, we wouldn't talk plumbing either, with 
an earthquake going on," some one defended America. 

But some one else, who knew France well, long 
before the earthquake, denied the inference that it 
was the war which had created this indifference to 
plumbing. "It has always been so. They don't 
mind inconvenience. Except in regard to food, the 
French are not nearly as particular as we are; and 
they do without luxuries in a way that would terrify 
the American of average means." 

One sees this "doing without" on all sides. There 
is a little street here, paved with egg-shaped cob- 

159 



SMALL THINGS 

blestones (placed with the small end up! — you can 
imagine how comfortable that is for high heels!) 
where I came upon two women washing clothes in the 
bowl of a fountain set in an old, old wall. From the 
time-worn stone mouths of two lions came jets of 
water, one sparkling clear and cold, the other steam- 
ing hot — "Z)^ Veau naturelle, Madamey" one of the 
women said, looking up from the scouring and 
pounding of her linen, and drawing a puckery wet 
finger across her sweating forehead. I stood and 
watched them for a few minutes — little robust 
women, wringing out their linen with arms that would 
have done credit to a blacksmith. "How can they 
endure the inconvenience of bringing their washing 
out of their own houses?" I said to myself. "And 
think of carting that great basket of wet clothes 
(and there is nothing heavier than wet linen!) back 
to a clothes-line, or a green hillside, a quarter of a 
mile away!" 

At home, running water and stationary tubs 
would have been, in a town of this size, as much a 
matter of course to a laundress as soap and 
water. Yet I am compelled to add that very few 
of us, doing our washing in our own way, are as 

160 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

powerful, clear-skinned, calm-ejed, as these elderly 
hlanchis senses (they couldn't have been much under 
seventy) scrubbing and pounding their linen in the 
old Roman basin on that silent, sunny, sleepy street. 

But these are working women, and so perhaps 
they are used to hardships. How about women who 
don't toil with their bodies .^ 

A French friend told me, when I expressed a little 
surprise at being obliged to sit up all night on a rail- 
road train because the few couchettes there were, 
had all been taken, that in France the woman in 
what is called 'comfortable circumstances' expects 
to sit up all night, instead of paying for the luxury 
of a couchette! Children here run about in January, 
their bare legs purple with cold above their short 
stockings. Such things are taken for granted. 

Consider the things which many of us take for 
granted: furnace heat, telephone service, a light 
over the bed for late reading, a warm room in which 
to dress in winter, a cool breeze from an electric 
fan in summer, running water on every floor, hot 
baths (no matter if there is an earthquake!). These 
things, which are matters of course to many Amer- 
icans, are considered over here extreme, unusual, and 

161 



SMALL THINGS 

entirely unnecessary luxuries. Well enough for the 
foolish and idle rich, — such folks depend upon lux- 
uries! But for people like you and me — just ordi- 
nary, intelligent, good citizens — ^luxuries have been 
non-existent. This "doing without" is connected, 
no doubt, with French penuriousness, which is the 
outgrowth of their thrift — (one of our boys called it 
*cussed meanness'); but as a result of the physical 
hardship which thrift has engendered, the French 
people, now that the earthquake has come, are en- 
during hardships in a way which makes Americans 
ask themselves a certain question: 

Is it possible that there is some connection between 
national discomfort and national character? 

If we say there is, we must believe that the French 
nation, which just now is standing, not only for its 
own life, but for civilization, has been helped to 
stand, because it has been educated to endure. It 
has not weakened its moral or physical fiber by "fuss- 
ing" over the relatively unimportant. When we 
recognize that we can, perhaps, see a hope in our 
own gradually increasing discomfort at home; I 
shouldn't wonder if we would even (remembering 
France) come to accept discomforts — ^privations — 

162 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

sacrifices — with real enthusiasm! A recognition of 
what privation can accompUsh in developing char- 
acter, may be the gift of which suffering Europe is 
sending to America. 

I don't mean that to recognize the value of pri- 
vation, we must forswear our bathtubs, or deliber- 
ately sit up all night in sleeping cars, or do without 
telephones; of course such self-sacrifice would not 
only be artificial, but absurd. I only mean that we 
may acquire an idea of their value in relation to life. 
And we won't "fuss" if we can't have them! Judg- 
ing from the way things look now, we Americans will 
"join the dance" of renunciation, not because we 
want to, but because we have to ; and as a result, liv- 
ing wiU be simpler. And apart from the material 
changes which the war will bring about, spiritual 
changes are inevitable. No man or woman whose 
heart now is with some soldier in France, can, — at 
any rate immediately — drop back when he returns 
(or does not return) into the old pettiness of com- 
plaint at personal inconveniences. 

A French girl brought home to me this lesson of 
values in a story she told me. She was such a pretty 
girl ! She said what she had to say in a very matter- 

163 



SMALL THINGS 

of-fact way; "preaching" was the last thing she 
thought of. All the same it was a sermon. . . . 

It appears that she and her husband were at their 
place in the country when the war broke out and 
the call for mobilization came. 

"It was a so-small place, Madame," she said, "and 
every one knew mon mari must go. And when I went 
to market that morning, many spoke kindly to me. 
Me, — I did not think he would ever come back. . . . 
I did not say so, yet every one seemed to know; 
and so they spoke kindly to me. And in the market 
was an old woman; she, too, knew my Gustave was 
to depart. And she gave me my legumes. Then she 
put her hand on my shoulder — she was but a poor 
old countrywoman, and of an ignorance, no doubt. 
I am told that in Northern America no one is ignor- 
ant?" (I gasped, but let the statement pass.) "In 
France, many of us are sans education; but she was 
of great wisdom, cette melle femme, though without 
reading. She said to me: 'Mon enfant! ton mari 
part? Souviens-toi: You will not cry until he has 
gone. Then, you may weep,'' So, Madame," she 
ended simply, "I waited to weep." She told me of 
Gustave's departure : "I went to the gare de depart 

164 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

with him, and I put on my best clothes. My hat of 
white silk — my new best hat, I put on; a thing I 
would not do for a so-dusty railroad station! I 
put it on, Madame, because I did not expect to see 
him again. So I put on my chapeau de sole blanche, 
because, I said, 'The last time he sees me I will be 
pretty.' " 

She was so pretty as she told me this, so white and 
work-worn and quite lovely, with her little girl lean- 
ing against her knee — and, when she thought I was 
not looking, putting shy arms about her mother's 
neck. (It is almost four years since the day that 
the white silk hat was worn to the so-dusty railroad 
station, and the husband and father has seen his 
Treasures many times, and he is still well and serv- 
ing France ; but I don't believe he has seen her weep 
yet. And I am pretty sure he hasn't seen any new 
white silk hats either!) 

It was the end of her little brave story, however, 
that set me thinking about the relative values of 
things. She told me of the breaking up of the small 
household after he had gone. ... I could guess how 
she did it ; how, as she packed and sorted and folded 
her pretty dresses — and put twists of tissue paper 

165 



SMALL THINGS 

around the white silk hat in the big hat box, — she 
was saying to herself over and over: "He was alive 
day before yesterday, but is he alive now?" And 
again : "If anything had happened since I got his let- 
ter on Thursday, I should have heard by to-day ; and 
no notice has come to me !" I could imagine how, in 
all the confusion and hurry, she would stop, and 
give a shrinking glance down the street, for fear 
that "notice" was coming. Then stop again, to kiss 
her baby, and try to make its milky lips bubble 
baby-talk about "Papa!" Or, perhaps, even leave 
the open trunks, to run across the street to the 
church to buy a candle for the altar of St. Joseph, 
before which she would fall on her knees and pray: 
"Keep him safe to-day T^ 

"Oui, Madamey^' she said, her little fingers twist- 
ing together until the knuckles were white, "Je Tue 
sowviens, how we had togezzer, mon mari et moi, 
achete toutes les meuhles — foorniteur, you would say 
in American? Ah, my anglais is var' bad." 

I assured her that it was better than my French; 
and the fact that her eyes were full of tears made 
no difference in her pretty, protesting French po- 
liteness : "Non, non, Madame's French is of a qual- 

166 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

ity !" (It is — she was quite right !) Her eyes smiled 
as she spoke of the furniture "he" and she had 
bought together, — with all sorts of droll and happy 
economies, of course! All of us Americans who have 
been fortunate enough to marry on nothing very 
much a year, and been poor, and less poor, and then, 
perhaps, after a good long time, "comfortably off," 
together, will know how much happiness slowly ac- 
quired furniture, stands for. 

"We bought nos meubles togezzer. We had to 
save mooch to buy them. And I was most happy, 
Madame, wiz my leetle t'ings. I fought ver' mooch 
of my t'ings. I lofFed ze chaise, ze table. Does 
Madame understand? Eh bienf Now, of zem I t'ink 
nozzing! I t'ink of him, of his life. Will he come 
bach to me? Oh, Madame, what matter ze chair, ze 
table? Just his life!" 

In France, now, all the women's hearts are saying : 
"His life ! His life !" Let the chair and the table go 
(chop them up for firewood!) They are of no con- 
sequence! Just "his" life, that is all the women 
want. I wonder if they remember days of "fuss" 
about ze chair and ze table? Even about the white 
silk hat? Instead, I think, they say to themselves 

167 



SMALL THINGS 

that Life is more than meat and the body than rai- 
ment, and that more than Life (which is Love), and 
more than the body (which is physical well-being), 
is the idealism which makes men and women willing 
to lose both for Righteousness' sake ! Of course, we 
have all known that the things of the spirit are price- 
less, when individually we have — as our slangy 
young people say — "come up against it." I remem- 
ber hearing a woman whose heart was squeezed dry 
with fear because her husband was ill, say: "Oh, 
what does it matter if my front door steps are not 
painted!" But she had to "come up against it," 
before she acquired this knowledge. Over here every- 
body is up "against it," and nobody thinks of door 
steps. But we Americans, in our placid living, in 
which revealing moments of fear have been personal 
experiences, have not as a country eliminated the 
front steps. I doubt if anybody on our side of the 
Atlantic realizes what it means to have the entire 
people, of an entire nation, fear the same thing, at 
the same time, and all the time! To have, practi- 
cally, everybody realize the unimportance of the un- 
painted steps. To have them see how the big things 
and the little things have changed their places in the 

168 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

**waltz." And with that, to see how glorious the 
"little" things are. ... I am going to tell you of 
two very little glorious things. 

The first is the story of an elderly Y. M. C. A. 
worker (I shall not ask his permission to tell the 
story because I know he would not give it). This 
"little" thing happened at the Front — I suppose I 
must not say where. He was the only Y. M. C. A. man 
with a certain Division, the work of which was done 
entirely at night; during the day the men rested as 
best they could in what was left of a little village, 
or in their dugouts. I say "as best they could," 
because they were under terrible and contin- 
uous shell-fire. Somebody who happened to count the 
explosions, reports that two thousand eight hundred 
shells fell within their lines in one hour and a quar- 
ter; six had struck the Y. M. C. A. hut. This 
worker, and some soldiers, had taken shelter in the 
cellar of the ruined building. Toward evening the 
shelling ceased, and Mr. Taylor thought he would 
make some chocolate for the bored and nerve-wracked 
men huddling there with him in the cellar. So he 
crept out into the blessed evening stillness ; he had to 
get the milk — which had been left in one of the dug- 

169 



SMALL THINGS 

outs — and then start his fire; this he could do by 
picking up sphnters from what had once been the 
rafters of little houses. The fire burning", Mr. Tay- 
lor went into the deserted dugout for milk. 

He did not know it, but a gas bomb had exploded 
at the entrance and the place was full of deadly fumes 
which, as he entered, seized hlim by the throat and 
flung him down, gasping and choking and smother- 
ing. For a few minutes he lay there, then, as con- 
sciousness returned, slowly, painfully, with dread- 
ful struggles for breath, he got that jug of milk, 
and crawled back a little distance. I wonder 
if I had better tell of the next half -hour? The 
prolonged vomiting, which results from this par- 
ticular expression of German hideousness, the 
vomiting of blood. . . . No! I won't go into 
that. Mr. Taylor, himself, treated it as a very 
little thing. I will only say that he "pulled himself 
together," which is his casual way of expressing a 
magnificent endurance of pain — pulled himself to- 
gether, got on his feet, collected some more splinters, 
rebuilt his fire, — and from eight that night until 
four the next morning when they carried him off 
on a stretcher that Y. M. C» A. man did his 

170 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

'^damnedest" (as a Y. M. C. A. expression, this gives 
me peculiar pleasure) in making his boys com- 
fortable. 

Now comes the "little" thing which is really so 
big: There was one of our men who had been stand- 
ing, I am afraid to say how long, in a trench up to 
his knees in mud; the noise, the strain, the dirt, the 
smell, the spiritual misery, had been just a little 
too much for him. The balance of a rather highly 
strung mind dipped the wrong way. He decided that 
he would not return to the firing line — "I had my 
revolver with me," he said afterwards, significantly. 
But when the hour for his return sounded, the re- 
volver was not used! Why.'' Because the "little" 
thing had happened. This kind, brave, elderly gen- 
tleman had seen the strain in the young eyes, and 
had taken the boy and washed him, — ^lots of good 
hot water and soap! Then clean clothes (Mr. Tay- 
lor's own extra clothes!). Then chocolate and cig- 
arettes. And through it all, friendly "jollying." 
And back the soldier boy went, "as steady as a 
clock!" 

"It was the washing that did it," somebody said. 

I think the cup of hot chocolate helped; when 
171 



SMALL THINGS 

you come to think of it, the "cup of cold water" is a 
little thing, too. Incidentally, I can't help saying 
that I don't see how the American people, knowing 
things like this, can refrain from getting up early in 
the morning and "doing their damnedest" to help the 
Y. M. C. A.! 

My second story of a great little thing was told to 
me in Paris. There is a street there which creeps 
along in the shadow of St. Pierre du Gros Caillou. 
There are many small huddling shops in this street. 
Outside their doors, blackbirds whistle in wicker 
cages, and on the narrow pavements are women with 
netted bags, bargaining anxiously for vegetables. 
A blank wall breaks a row of these little shops, a 
wall with a door in it, a furtive weather-stained 
door with hinges crumbling into rust. You don't 
notice this door until it swings open, and you step 
down — into a garden ! An old, old garden, mossy 
and green and still. There is a rustle of birds' 
wings in the ivy which covers the trunk of one of 
the great trees, and year after year, in untended 
friendliness, lilies and irises grow wherever they 
please. Enclosing the garden, on four sides, are 
tall dilapidated houses. Nestling against the back 

ITS 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

of one of them is a "so-little maisoUy^^ in which for 
two years wise, gentle hands have cared for the un- 
important miseries of the war. Here come, to be 
comforted (not by gifts but by work), small, timid 
people. Old women, little children, delicate girls, 
whom the roar of the storm has dazed and deafened. 
Just little lives, torn from niches of peaceful labor 
and hurled into a din of fears and griefs, dashed 
from their contents into hunger and cold. These 
little lives do not speak; — who, in the uproar 
would hear them if they did.-^ So, but for this green 
garden, and the pitying souls who walk in it — not 
only in the cool of the day, but all day — and who 
offer in the ^'petite maison^' the dole of sewing, 
these unimportant lives would have ceased alto- 
gether. In an upper room of the little house is a 
sad-eyed refugee from Arras. She had been a most 
successful dressmaker. She had made her living and 
a comfortable fortune besides, and had retired from 
business. Then suddenly she was pulled from her 
house as one might drag a dog from his kennel, and 
turned out into the world, without money, without 
a shelter, and without a business. Somehow or other, 
with all sorts of privations and terrors, she man- 

173 



SMALL THINGS 

aged to reach Paris, and once there, found refuge 
in the house in the garden. It is she, acting as fore- 
woman under the direction of Mile. Guilhou who 
founded the work, who gives out sewing to this group 
of pitiful people. Sewing, which not only keeps their 
bodies alive but keeps their minds steady in the crash 
of their world of toil — their cheerful world of 
whistling blackbirds, and little girls in clicking 
wooden shoes, and bare-legged little boys in black 
aprons. . . • How would Adam and Eve have 
felt, if the flaming sword had been sheathed and they 
could have stepped back into Paradise? So, I think, 
must this haggard refugee from Arras feel, in the 
Petit Ouvroir du Gros Caillou; and the old women, 
and the children, and the sickly girls (tuberculosis is 
raging among them) who sit by the windows in the 
sunshine, stitching, stitching, to earn their few 
francs a day ! Sometimes lift their heads to look out 
at the lilies and irises and stay their needles, while 
they listen to the stir of birds' wings in the ivy. 
And the forewoman, teaching them to do very beau- 
tiful embroidery (there still are people who, for 
Mercy's sake, will buy costly embroidery), the ref- 
ugee from Arras, touches the silks and satins with 

174 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

an artist's appreciative fingers and thanks the Bon 
Dieu and Mile. Guilhou for safety and sanity. "It's 
up to people at home to keep the Pebble rolling," an 
American said. 

You see it is nothing but a tiny, modest, heavenly 
"Helping" ; a very "little" thing. The hearts which 
do it (two are American, one is French) need no 
red tape to bind them to their task. It was in this 
small house that I heard a story of the Spirit, which 
discerns Values. Mrs. Henry Conkling, one of the 
two Americans told it to me . . . 

There was a certain old woman — ^husband dead 
long ago ; daughter dead, war-stunned and crushed ; 
son dead, war-devoured — who was going steadily, pa- 
tiently, without complaint, down-hill. 

"She'll die," said the doctor briefly. 

"NatureUement! she has nothing for which to live," 
said the understanding French heart, which used to 
come every day to the weary bedside in the little 
so-dark room on the sixth floor. "Nothing to live 
for" ; of course she would die. 

"Is there anything you would like to have?" the 
American asked anxiously. 

"Oh, out, ma horme dame, mais c*est impossible.*' 
1*75 



SMALL THINGS 

"Perhaps it isn't. Tell me what it is?" 

'^Non, non, c'est impossible!" 

"But tell me: perhaps I can get it for you?" She 
was thinking — this unscientific person ! — of some del- 
icacy, some luxury, and with the same divine ex- 
travagance which broke the alabaster box instead 
of doing something efficient and practical, she meant 
to produce that luxury for the dying woman, some- 
how! ("Just a little pleasantness before she died, 
you know," she excused herself.) 

"What is it, ma vielle amie? Tell me," she urged. 

*'It is, my good lady, to go to la cimetiere." 

''What!'' 

"Oui, To see before I die the graves of mes enfants, 
and to say there a prayer." 

The American got her breath and remonstrated 
gently: "But you are sick in bed! You have not 
the strength to walk down-stairs. And the weather 
is so bad now, so cold and damp! To go out 
to the cemetery would be too much for you." In 
her own mind she was saying, "Poor dear, you 
will, indeed, go to the cemetery very soon." But the 
old woman feebly insisted: Oh, yes, she was able 
to go, but it was, of course, impossible. She turned 

176 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

her gray head wearily, from side to side, and said 
again patiently, ^^Oh, out; c^est impossible^ 

Of course it was, for the cemetery was in the war 
zone; and it was all wrong, too, according to or- 
ganized charity, which probably must recognize 
value in terms of cost; for just think of the expense 
of hiring a taxi for the long trip out to the surburbs 
of Paris! But, wrong or not, after infinite diffi- 
culties in getting a permit from the War Office, it 
was done! On a cold, slushy All Saints' Day, sur- 
rounded by hot water bottles, the trip was taken. 
The failing steps were guided to the two graves, for 
which the American had provided some flowers ; then 
the two women knelt together in the snow, and one 
of them said her own prayer for the Soul of France. 
When the old mother, still on her knees, had arranged 
the flowers all over again — for the boy must have 
a rose, and the girl must have a lily — she got on to 
her shaking feet. Then some one happened to say, — 
the taxi driver I think it was, — La has, those crosses 
mark the graves of our brave allies, some English 
soldiers." At which the old Frenchwoman raised her 
head and her eyes shone: 

"I go to pray at those graves!" 
177 



SMALL THINGS 

Behold her then, her skirts soaking wet, her poor 
shoes sodden with snow (rubbers are one of the lux- 
uries that even well-to-do French people don't "fuss" 
about) ; supported by the kind taxi driver on one 
side, and the American who knows values and doesn't 
think of costs, on the other, toiling and tottering 
across the snow to those lonely graves, "to pray 
there!" 

The postscript to this story is either humorous or 
mystical as you may happen to look at it. The fail- 
ing, patiently dying old mother, supplied with some- 
thing happy to think of — the achievement of that 
act of parental piety — recovered! She lived two 
years, stayed and comforted all the while by those 
gentle hands which have built up "The Little Work 
of the Big Pebble." I wonder whether that "Pebble" 
— that "Rock" upon which the Church was to be 
built — is not just this simple business of being kind.'' 
"Feed my lambs" sounds like it. So, at any rate, 
this hungry soul was fed with the things of the 
Spirit. . . . There was another 'kittle" thing that 
happened here. This, too, is the story of an elderly, 
forlorn woman. One day — a dark, snowy day — a 
certain American girl who has been working among 

178 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

the very poor in Paris, met this old woman, shivering 
along the street. She was over seventy; she was 
sick, and cold, and frightened; "for," she said, 
"qu'est-ce que je peux faire? I have no coal, and 
to stand in the line, at the dealer's, with my pail, 
and wait my turn, it is to die." So she was totter- 
ing oiF, back to her freezing niche, "to die" without 
any coal. Then happened one of the things that 
probably can't happen in large organized relief 
work. This girl of ours took the pail from the 
shaking old hands, and went to the coal dealer's, 
and stood in the line, stood in the rain and snow 
of the dark winter afternoon; stood, and stood, 
and finally got her pail filled. T^en back she 
went, across the boulevard (taxis don't flock in this 
part of Paris) down into the Quarter, through the 
twisting, narrow streets, up countless stairs, to the 
garret, and the old, cold woman, who had come back, 
patiently, to die. "And," said Mile. Guilhou, "when 
Mme. B. saw 'er, se taut se wass an an-gel!" 

I seem to have gone very far away from my sol- 
diers sitting in the March sunshine; but I am com- 
ing back to them, or rather to what they and "ze 
chaise and ze table," and the soap and water and hot 

179 



SMALL THINGS 

chocolate, and the Little Work of the Big Pebble, 
stand for: the recognition of values. The French 
nation — soldiers and young housekeepers and old 
mothers — knowing Values, has endured. 

Are we going to endure? 

I haven't the slightest doubt of it ! Only, looking 
back now from France, at American comfort and 
character, it does not seem to me as if we have quite 
wakened up yet to the full meaning of that word 
"endurance." We have risen to the world demand 
upon us splendidly. (I think we can afford, privately, 
just between ourselves, to say that to each other; 
because we know it isn't just the boasting of which 
our allies with cynical good nature accuse us.) We 
are not boasting, we are stating facts, we really 
are meeting the situation! But all the same, com- 
pared to the French, we were, when we went into 
the war, soft, and therefore we have got to think 
out carefully all to which that word ^^ endurance^' 
commits us. It commits us, first, to a knowledge of 
values, to the ability to discriminate between the un- 
important and the important. ... It will make 
us admit that, as a people, we have had no education 
in discomfort. To be sure, we are getting it now, — 

180 



THINGS WE THOUGHT WERE BIG 

but compared to France, in mighty easy lessons! 

As we learn our lessons, I think we are going to 
say, humbly, that we have been spoiled. Then we shall 
ask ourselves how we can most quickly recover from 
that spoiling. Of course, every individual will make 
a personal answer; but we shall agree that, col- 
lectively, we Americans have got to eliminate fuss 
about inconveniences. It might help us to do this, 
if we said over to ourselves every day: "We are 
face to face with the most extraordinary oppor- 
tunity that has ever confronted a nation — the 
opportunity to save the world." 

Does this sound like more American brag? It is 
not ; I could almost find it in my heart to wish that 
it were ! But I beg you to believe that it is not. It 
is the terrible truth. Let us face it. Here it is, 
March, 1918: Germany has got her second wind; 
England, France, Italy (for Russia is out of it) are 
winded. Unless America comes with ships, with 
food, with men, with ammunition, with sacrifice of 
the superfluous, with endured hardship, with spiritual 
suffering, with solemn readiness to give up what- 
ever is most precious to us, unless we can do this, 
all that is worth living for will be lost. We shall 

181 



SMALL THINGS 

be a conquered people. Can Americans bear that 
word? 

We shall have to bear it, unless we realize that 
if we do not save others, we cannot save ourselves. 
Realize that unless we stand shoulder to shoulder 
with England and France, America will be an en- 
slaved nation. A subject people! Freedom will 
perish from the earth. Civilization will go under. 

America mwst save the worldi 



vn 

"MARCHING GAYLY" 

IT was raining, and the mud on a road torn 
and plowed by the constant passage of camions 
seemed to have no bottom. The shabby little 
Y. M. C. A. auto which was carrying some workers 
from one canteen to another, sank sometimes almost 
hub-deep into the ruts. The mist hung low over the 
meadows, and the Marne ran brim-full between its 
lush green banks — full to over-flowing, for in places 
the poplar trees stood waist deep in rushing brown 
water. Here and there, staked off in the deep grass 
of these wide, wonderful meadows, were little weather- 
stained racks — four poles caught together by thin 
strips of wood, or by slender branches to which the 
dead leaves were still clinging. At the head of each 
of these frail cradles was a cross — sometimes with a 
cap fastened to it and a small faded flag ; sometimes, 
nailed to its extended arms, just a bit of board on 
which was written a name, or perhaps only a number. 

183 



SMALL THINGS 

The shaky little enclosures looked in the mist like 
spiders' webs ; but the graves themselves were jeweled 
with buttercups and pink-edged daisies and blue- 
fringed hyacinths — for so does nature forgive man's 
folly and hide it under her green mantle. It is almost 
four years ago now since that wonderful day on the 
Marne, when the Germans — no one but themselves 
know why ! — suddenly crumpled up, rolled back, and 
fled, when they might, as far as the military situa- 
tion was concerned, have marched right straight on 
to Paris! 

"Why didn't they?" I pondered. "What happen- 
ed.?" 

A very lovely French woman, looking at me with 
mystical blue eyes, answered: 

"God, Madame." 

God happened! 

Four springs have come since that happening, and 
now the fields of the Marne are all green and gra- 
cious again and the low-lying graves are thick with 
self-sown flowers. 

The Americans in the little shabby auto jolting 
and lurching through the mud, the rain driving into 
their faces, felt the wonder of nature's mercy and 

184. 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

the slightness of man's folly, compared to the flood 
of years ; and as they spoke of it, suddenly the car 
came to a full stop. A company of American soldiers 
came plodding along the road on their way to 
the cemetery ; an American to be buried — an Amer- 
ican who had given his life for France! Of course 
his fellow- Americans in the car got out and plodded 
along, too, behind the soldiers through the mud. 

They stood there, in the pouring rain, while our 
boy was lowered into that wet grave and the last 
salute was fired over his body and taps were sounded.. 
Then they went back to get into the muddy auta 
with its rusty wheel guards and cracked windshield ; 
it was then that something "happened." . . . The 
idark gates of this whole horrible business of War 
opened, and, for an instant they saw a vision 
of its meaning. Toiling through the mud on his, 
way to the cemetery which they had just left, was a 
French boy about ten years old. He was bearing 
on his back and across his shoulders a great wooden 
cross. It was some six feet long, and the little lad 
was bending and swaying, staggering even, under its 
weight. He was, he said, carrying it to the cemetery 
to put it on the grave of the American, buried there 

185 



SMALL THINGS 

in the rain — the American who had died for France! 
... So also did Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of 
the country, carry a cross for One who gave His life 
for the whole world! . . . The symbolism of the 
little burdened French boy was the gleam of ineffable 
light upon the darkness in which we all walk to-day ! 
It is worth while — it is surely worth while for the 
United States to carry the Cross — worth while for 
us to add the graves of our sons and lovers to those 
little cradling enclosures of sticks and branches in 
the green meadows of France. ... 

Our boys walk in these occasional processions, 
gravely; but not, I think, with depression. Indeed, 
it is very wonderful and stirring to me to see the un- 
depressed way in which American soldiers take the 
seriousness of the whole situation. 

"I don't fool myself," one man said. "This is no 
'Come, Fido, good Fido!' business. Maybe I won't 
ever see America again. But this job has got to be 
done, and I'^m damned glad to be here to help do it. 
It's a lot better than being all fed up with comfort at 
home." Which is just a shy boy's way of saying 
what a great, serene philosopher has said : 

186 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

'Tis man's perdition to be safe 
When for the Truth he ought to die! 

When a soldier "is damned glad to be here," surely, 
again, "God happens !" 

I have always been fairly appreciative of my native 
land, I think, though not quite blind to her faults; 
but now, as she reveals herself to me in these men — 
physically,, mentally, and spiritually — I confess I 
cannot see many faults ! They are an extraordi- 
narily fine set. Big, well-set-up, clear-skinned 
youngsters ! Such broad shoulders, such good teeth, 
which a tendency to wide grins very freely reveal! 
Such obstinate chins and such frank, gay eyes, which 
hold in their honest depths a very marked and serious 
intelligence. Compared with the soldiers of our al- 
lies, I am compelled, with all my admiration for the 
poilus and the Tommies, to say that many of our 
men look like a lot of college graduates ! And their 
talk! — in spite of the slang, much of which is a dead 
language to me — their talk bears out the intelligence 
in their faces. They know what they are doing, and 
why they are doing it, and how it must be done. What 
they are doing is to smash a snake's head ; why they 
are doing it is to make the world a decent place for 

187 



SMALL THINGS 

the kids to live in ; and the way they are doing it is 
by feeling their own unity ; feeling, not that they are 
Texans, or New Yorkers, or Georgians — those geo- 
graphical facts are merely incidental. They feel that 
they are AToericans! 

And here, for us personally, is another gleam of 
light: this war ought to make our Nation a unit. 
In the past she has been, because of our open gates, 
a polyglot. We shall be a People, when, in doing our 
part to smash the snake's head, we have "made the 
world a safe place for the kids to live in." Our men 
know this in the most extraordinarily intelligent 
way ; and they look forward even further than to our 
own unity — they have a vision of an allied unity. 
"Rotten thing, this speaking different languages. 
After the scrimmage, we'll all talk the same lingo. 
English for mine." 

"Gosh, how can I tell how many of these cart 
wheels make a franc .^^ Well, when we get through 
skinning Germany, the Allies must fix up a cur- 
rency of their own. Fool business to have so many 
different currencies. The French have some sense, 
— ^like us, — with their decimals ; but English money 
is the limit !" "Why don't they have decent plumbing 

188 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

in their towns? This war is a nickel-plated sun- 
beam compared with French sanitation and plumb- 
ing. You bet we'll teach France something when 
we get through teaching Germany her A B C's. But 
all the parts will have to be standardized; there's 
going to be a lot of standardization before we all 
settle down again." . . . Some of them go further 
than a common language and currency, and the 
standardization of plumbing ; further even than com- 
mercial unity — they want a spiritual unity of the 
whole world. 

"We can't have the devilish idiocy of war in the 
world. Of course, now we're in it we can only stop 
it by going on with it and winning it. But the idea 
of a lot of silly-billy kings and queens and emperors 
dragging us Americans over here to settle their hash ! 
I've got a wife in Los Angeles, and our baby's four 
months old — and m^, here ! No, sir ! You bet the 
nations over here have got to put crowns in the junk 
heap (we'll knock off Germany's tile, to start with) ; 
and get down to business, and make themselves a lot 
of States! Just like us. A world United States," 
one man said thoughtfully. 

Talk like this one hears every day when handing 
189 



SMALL THINGS 

chocolate over the counter, or trying to be quite 
firm in refusing to sell more than one package of 
Fatimas to a man. It takes fortitude to be firm 
with them — these wheedling, droll, determined men of 
ours ! And for my part I'd rather be court-martialed 
than try and work off Bull Durham on a boy who 
wants Fatimas. Sylvia is made of sterner stuff; she 
has to stand on a stool behind the counter to get on 
a level with the mocking, coaxing eyes, but she says 
firmly, ''No! Quite impossible. The Y. M. C. A. 
only lets me sell one package to a man. Very sorry." 
So she hands out the one package, and the boy 
meekly departs; a minute later another boy comes 
along and asks for Fatimas. "I believe that man with 
his arm in a sling sent you in?" Sylvia says doubtfuUy. 
"Oh, no, ma'am, not Johnny; smoking's bad for a 
busted arm, you know," he protests, grinning. And 
this small, law-abiding, soft-hearted Sylvia gives the 
Fatimas to the new-comer, and says in a delighted 
whisper to me, "Johnny sent this one in ! I knew he 
would!" 

"You do beat the devil," the messenger says ad- 
miringly. And he goes off to give the first man his 
unallowed package. (Sylvia says this isn't fair to 

190 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

the boys ; "they never do that — except once in a 
while." She insists that I take back my calumny.) 
But the mischievousness of our boys is built up on 
a foundation of almost terrible earnestness. You feel 
this steely earnestness, this unrelenting and intelli- 
gent purpose, in all their talk — for whether the talk 
is educated or uneducated, it is, practically always, 
intelligent. And in its shy, clumsy, slangy way it is 
often very subtly religious. ... It very rarely re- 
fers to creeds or churches, but it sometimes refers to 
God — and that is why they are so merry: inartic- 
ulately they know their purpose is holy, so it doesn't 
need talking about! And for the rest, God has a 
sense of humor. More than once, listening to them, 
I have thought of Chesterton's 

The men of the East may watch the skies. 

And the times and seasons mark, 
But those that are signed with the cross of Christ 

Go gayly into the dark ! 

So don't let us scold them for their roughness or 
their lack of religious expression, or their smoking 
(I fear a lot of old ladies at home are doing that!), 
or their foolish and sometimes evil skylarking; for 
with it all they are marching into the darkness, so 

191 



SMALL THINGS 

that gentleness and friendliness, as well as the aus- 
terer virtues may not perish from the earth. Of 
course they will perish from the earth, if Germany 
wins this war. Could gentleness and decency persist 
if the world should be dominated by a people who are 
capable of doing something the Germans did, not 
long ago, in northern France? (I may say that 
this story is vouched for by the Abbe Dimnet, a man 
whose name carries weight in England and America, 
as well as in France. He told me the story himself 
— it came to him, from a soldier, who saw the whole 
happening) : 

A French company came upon a lonely house by 
a country road ; I know just the kind of house — gray 
with years, its thatched roof, mossy-green and licheiF 
stained, pulled down over its small windows, and with 
carnations and pansies and wallflowers pressing their 
velvet faces close against its crumbling old founda- 
tions. There was a vegetable garden behind it, sur- 
rounded by the customary jealous wall — one of those 
French enclosures that seem to shut the family in, 
and the world out. The French soldiers, coming sud- 
denly upon this lonely house, were able to capture 
two Germans who were standing in its little door- 

192 



^'MARCHING GAYLY'^ 

way. As they took the men's weapons and made 
them prisoners, they heard a faint moaning from be- 
hind the wall ; the officer stepped back into the garden 
and found lying on the ground a woman with one 
breast hacked off. 

"Did they do it?" the captain said between 
clenched teeth. She nodded: ^^Oiii, oui.'^ 

The officer went back to the prisoners: there was 
only the delay of standing the first one against the 
wall — and he was shot. 

"The other !" said the captain. 

But this man, cringing with terror, had an inspir- 
ation of self-defense. "No ! No ! It was not fair to 
shoot him ! There were f ranc-tireurs in the house — 
let M. le Capitaine see for himself ! We had the right 
to protect ourselves against f ranc-tireurs I" he 
said, ashen with fear. The officer paused, grimly, 
long enough to substantiate the charge — plainly an 
after-thought, for the dead man on the ground had 
offered no such excuse. He signalled to his firing 
squad to wait, and went into the house. 

He found there a seven-year-old child, and a gun. 

I do not know whether the mother had tried to use 
the gun — perhaps she had tried, though it seems un- 

193 



SMALL THINGS 

likely. Or perhaps the seven-year-old child had tried 
to use it. If so, the laws of war would have permitted 
the punishment of death; but only the laws of hell 
would have justified the reprisal of cutting off the 
mother's breast! 

This is not one of those occasional acts of bnitish- 
ness common to all armies, of all nations. It is only 
one of hundreds and thousands of brutish acts, cer- 
tainly committed by German soldiers, probably con- 
doned; possibly ordered, by German officers. That 
is why our men say soberly, "Germany has to be 
smashed — for the sake of the kids!" 

Yes, the world has got to be made safe for the next 
generation. . . . God must "happen!" 

"For suttenly," said a soft Virginia voice, "the 
Germans are the limit." And because they recognize 
that fact American men go gayly into the dark! 
Which reminds me of a story, told in a canteen very 
near the front : 

We were in a Y. M. C. A. hut, sitting on narrow 
little benches beside oilcloth-covered tables; the sol- 
diers were smoking, and writing letters, and playing 
cards ; and at the back of the hut the most terrible 
rausic machine you ever heard was grinding out 

194 



"MARCHING GAYLY'* 

"Beautiful Lady." "Let's tell stories,'* somebody 
suggested, and everybody was obliged to take their 
turn, — which was very terrifying to the American 
Author's Service. 

"7 won't !" said Edith and the Small Person. But 
they both did, and very good stories they told, too. 
Then a man in uniform got up — and told this story : 
"There were once three men who put up a watch as 
a prize to the man who should tell the biggest lie. 
The first man told his lie, and it was a darned good 
lie. Then the second man came along, and believe 
me! he worked off some lie! Say, it was a master- 
piece. He thought he'd got the watch, sure. Then 
the third man got up, and he said, 'Once upon a time, 
there was a German gentleman — ' *StopP all the 
others yelled. *You get the watch !' " 

The American soldier may put his detestation of 
German degeneracy into yarns like this, but knowl- 
edge of the depth of that degeneracy is the thing that 
pushes him on in his hilarious, inflexible, righteous 
purpose to "save the world !" Of course America is 
only doing what France and England and Italy have 
done ; but it is a great thing to know that our men, 
who are not here for material gain, but who have 

195 



SMALL THINGS 

come, first to defend America from the invasion whichi 
would follow a German victory in Europe, and next 
from pure idealism — it is a great thing to know that 
our soldiers see, in the uniting of the Allies to crush 
the Abominable Thing, the Dawn of the Federation 
of the World ! It doesn't matter how they express it ; 
they may tell the few people who still believe in Ger- 
man Kultur, to "take the watch" ; or they may only 
say that the allied victory will rid the nations of cen- 
times and six-pences and lire. "We'll call 'em all 
dimes!" they say, and wink broadly at their own 
boastfulness ; or they may declare that plumbing and 
electric fixtures and auto parts will have an inter- 
national standardization. But in their brave young 
hearts, in their practical young heads, they know it 
means the "world standardization" of decency and 
mercy and honor. 

"No more 'scraps of paper' when we get througli 
wiping the floor up with Germany. God knows, she's 
made it dirty enough !" 

Then they told us, this particular group of men, 
some stories of Germany's "dirtiness," that I won't 
repeat. The moaning woman behind the gray stone 
wall of the vegetable garden is all I can bear. 

196 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

Perhaps people at home wonSer why such stories 
are told, anyhow. They are terrible and painful, so 
why repeat them ? For a very simple reason : To the 
people in America the European war is not and can- 
not be quite real. You have not felt the house shake 
under the concussion of exploding bombs ; you have 
not seen the Grand Central Station in New York 
filled with old crying men and women, and with little 
scared, sobbing, hungry children, covered with the 
dirt of days and nights of unwashed travel ; you have 
not seen dovelike nuns, mad, because German soldiers 
stripped them naked and made them wait on their 
mess table ; you have not heard of an American boy 
dead in the trenches because his tongue had been 
cut out. And not having seen these things, how 
can you realize what it means to be invaded by 
Germany.? Fortunately, our boys have realized it, 
and that is why they are ready to march "into the 
dark." 

While I am talking about our soldiers, I must tell 
you how keenly and droUy they are "sizing up" our 
Allies. 

They have their own opinions of the French peo- 
ple! "They're all right," our men say, "but, gee, 

197 



SMALL THINGS 

ain't they queer? Slow! Can you beat it? They 
take about an hour to do a thing we'd do in a 
minute !" 

I heard two stories of what our men call "slow- 
ness." One was told me by an officer, the other by a 
private. The officer and I sat in a compartment in 
a railroad train, and wondered if four of our Allies 
who shared it with us, could possibly be induced to 
open a window; (I may add that they could not!) 
I cannot remember just what particular "slowness" 
had aroused my compatriot, but, after making sure 
that ours was a dead language to the other travelers, 
he said, "They're all tied up in double bow knots of 
red tape. / don't know how they ever get things done ! 
That's the wonder of their war (for it's their war, 
when all is said) ; — in spite of their slowness, and what 
we call inefficiency, they arrive. By God!" he said, 
with sudden passion, "how they do arrive! The 
splendor of them, the wonder of them!" Then 
he told his story: there had been a very heavy 
snow storm; (this was in the south of France, where 
any snow is a rare thing, and snow to this extent, un- 
precedented; so, as there were no facilities for re- 
moving it from the railroad tracks, transportation 

198 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

was seriously blocked. Before morning broke upon 
the freight yard of the camp, everything was at a 
standstill, — switches choked, tracks piled with drifts, 
and trains powr le ravitaiUementy held up far away 
from platforms and store houses. And the snow was 
still falling! The American General stationed there 
went to the French General to see what was to be 
done. The French officer said that as soon as it was 
dawn, he was ready to put a hundred men to work 
on clearing the tracks. 

"But it will take," he said, "the entire day." 
The American offered (I don't know anything 
about military etiquette, so I may be putting this all 
wrong ! — it is only the fact, not the procedure, which 
I am trying to report) ; the American General of- 
fered his own men to do the work, and the French 
General agreed. At seven o'clock in the morning 
sixty Americans sprang at the job, and by ten A. M., 
the yards were entirely cleared, and traffic began 
again! .... "Yet," as my young officer told me, 
"they do arrive !" 

The private's story showed the same puzzle in 
his mind. After all, though smartness is a mighty 
fine thing, "these here foreigners do saw wood ! We," 

199 



SMALL THINGS 

said he, "were trying out one of our big guns. There 
was one of their generals there, — ^visiting our old 
Top; they was both out to see the show. And the 
French general, he says to our general, 'After she's 
fired, it takes about thirty-five minutes to get her 
ready for the next one,' he says, *so let's you and me 
go out and get a drink between shoots.' (Well, of 
course, in their language I suppose they put it differ- 
ent. But the feller that heard it can speak their 
jaw, and he said that was the substance of it.) 
*Come on,' says the French general, 'and it'll be on 
me.' But our general, he says, 'Keep your shirt on,' 
he says; 'I wouldn't have time to get a high ball 
down !' And he was right, for what do you know? She 
f,red — and gee, we was on to her, cleanin' her up and 
gettin' her ready, quicker 'an you could spit ! There 
she was, — askin' for more, right off. Well, ma'am, 
that French general, he says to our general, 'Monsur, 
you've got the goods ! You've one on us. I hand it 
to you,' he says, bowin'. Well, he was a sport, that 
little man. I liked his looks. 'Course, he's slow, 
compared to any of our generals ; but look here : he^s 
got the goods. That's what I say about the French. 

mo 



"MARCHING GAYLY'' 

They ain't in our class, of course, for get there ; but 
they do get there. Now, what do you make of that?'* 

But if the American soldier "sizes up" our allies, 
with rather ruthless frankness, he also sizes him- 
self up. 

Somebody had the brilliant idea of trying to find 
out what his ethical code over here really is. Not 
what his creed is; as to belief, some Ameri- 
can soldiers would consider a question about that an 
impertinence, and others would think it a stupidity; 
some, no doubt, would say, "Well, my folks are Pres- 
byterians, or Catholics, or Baptists — guess you can 
put me down in their class." And some would say 
they hadn't any creed, and some would say, "Go 
chase yourself!" The evangelist who tried to get at 
the ethics of our men, asked just one laconic and 
penetrating question : 

What do you thmh are the four worst things a sol- 
dier can dof 

The answers which were expected probably occur 
to us all. If women had been asked the question, 
how glibly most of us would have replied: 

Unchastity Profanity 

Intemperance Cruelty 

SOI 



SMALL THINGS 

Two of these things are sins of the body. But 
our boys, "marching gayly," know in their clear 
and often creedless young minds that the body is 
not the most important thing; they know (but most 
of them couldn't put it into words to save their 
necks!) that it is the spirit which counts. So 
this is the list they made up of the worst things: 

Cowardice Stinginess 

Selfishness Big-head 

It seems to me that, just as the "standardization'* 
of plumbers' supplies is one of the steps towards the 
divine ideal of World Unity — so these simple words 
mean something divine, too, for they stand for 
spiritual virtues. To a great extent they include the 
bodily virtues, also. I suppose a really "unselfish" 
person will not be unchaste ; intemperance is rooted in 
cowardice ; and of course the stingy person is cruel ; 
profanity, silly and offensive as it is, is also a form 
of big-head. But just see the directness of these 
slangy men of ours. The opposite of what is worst, 
is what is best: To be brave! To be kind! To be 
generous! To be humWe! So "God happens," for 
these are the "best" things. In them is the Religion 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

of Jesus, cleared of the swaddling-clothes of creeds, 
a Religion which rejoices as a strong man to run 
a race! 

I tell this little incident because some timid and 
loving souls at home have confused creeds with con- 
duct, conventions with righteousness, and things of 
the Spirit with stupidities of the body. 

It has come to my knowledge that there are good 
people, in America who are really unhappy because 
our bbys smoke ! If I had seen this in the funny col- 
umn of a French newspaper, I should have supposed 
it was a joke. But it isn't a joke; it is a pathetic 
and unhumorous fact that there are still American 
men and women who find time in this rocking, reeling 
world to remonstrate with a man who is putting his 
life between them and Hell — about smoking! "Let 
me look at your fingers," said one elderly American 
lady to a soldier. The boy, puzzled, spread out his 
big paw wonderingly. When she saw the yellow stain 
on the rough forefinger she sighed and shook her 
head, and told him he was "very naughty." I don't 
know how the man kept his face straight, but he did ; 
and he kept his temper, too, which is more than I can 
say for myself ! No, our American soldiers are not 

203 



SMALL THINGS 

angels ; neither, I have noticed, are the people who 
stay at home and do the heavy looking-on and the 
criticizing. They are just plain, well-meaning men 
who know what is decent, and who believe that to 
"save the world for the kids" a soldier must be brave, 
and generous, and forget himself, and not be a 
"damned fool ;" which is another way of saying, "no 
big-head in mine!" With this belief (you can call 
it §1 creed if you want to, though it is not the prop- 
erty of any one church) they march gayly, roughly, 
divinely, "into the dark !" 

"Well — look at the poilus ! I guess we're not the 
only pebbles on the beach!" somebody said. 

True enough, we are not. And we cannot "look" 
at the men in blue too often or too reverently — for 
they have taught us many things in the way of cour- 
age, unselfishness, kindness, and simplicity of mind. 
One of the poilus the other day, with legs cut off at 
the hips, "marched" very gayly, in a child's little 
express wagon, turning the wheels with his hands, 
right across the Champs Elysees, threading his way 
through a stream of vehicles, asking nobody's favor 
or pity. 

I have only seen their gayety dull, their courage 
204 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

flag, when the matter of their families' suffering 
comes home to them. I saw one such "flagging" in 
the hospital yesterday; this man had lost his sight 
and was sitting, leaning forward, his hands on his 
cane, his forehead on his hands ; he was swaying back 
and forth. As I passed him I heard him say: *'Ma 
femme! Ma femmeP^ He was in the "dark," poor 
man, for all the rest of his life. . . . 

But the French have faced "darkness" deeper than 
blindness, "darkness" into which "gayety" cannot 
enter, as it can into mere Death! Here is a "dark" 
story told me by Mme. Loyson, whose house, at 110 
rue du Bac, Paris, is a home for any homeless, 
wounded, convalescent poilu she may happen to find. 
In this quiet, friendly, hospitable (not hospital) 
home of hers was a young French soldier who one 
day suddenly broke out into violent and terrible 
abuse of the Germans. He was a good-natured, 
light-hearted boy, who up to this time had displayed 
no particular resentment at the Boches; certainly 
no resentment at the personal injury he had received 
from their hands. "Wound.'' Eh, bieni that is of 
no importance. You give, you take. Me — ^I handed 
it back," he said, grinning. So this outburst of rage 

205 



SMALL THINGS 

was startling, Mme. Loyson said, and its intensity 
almost shocking. ... It appears that something 
had been said about girls — perhaps about the pretty 
creatures coming and going along rue du Bac. 

"I have cousins of their age," he said. 

It was then that his pale face grew darkly red. 
"We were brought up together," he said ; "but I don't 
want to see them again, Madaftie, ever! Non, non! 
I could not bear it to see them again." 

"But why not?" she said. 

"Because, Madame, — " He paused and looked 
away from her. "Our town was taken, as you know. 
The families of my uncles did not fly, as they should 
have done. They remained. Madame! Les made" 
moiselles, my cousins — are to be mothers. Their 
babies will Jiave German fathers. No ! My cousins, 
si fraicJies, si jolies! ... I cannot endure it — for 
them — that I should see them." 

There is another story of this same unwillingness 
to "see them." . . . There came to Mme. Loyson's 
house a silent, elderly man with gentle, tragic, hope- 
less eyes. I have seen his picture: it was a face of 
delicacy and suffering. But whatever the suffering 
was he kept it to himself. He used to sit out in the 

£06 



"MARCHING GAYLY" 

little garden behind the house in the sun, very silent 
and listless, not even reading or trying to do the 
fancy-work of one kind or another which Mme. Loy- 
son has devised for restless, idle hands. Once he said 
laconically that he had "been a weaver in a factory 
in Rheims." 

Was he married? 

"And have you children?" 

"Non! Non! Mon Dieu, nonF' 

His agitation was so marked that his friendly in- 
terlocutor knew she had touched a hidden wound. 
As she watched him, day after day, she saw that the 
wound was not healing. He sat brooding, brooding, 
brooding, his head hanging on his breast, his lips 
dumb. 

"Shall I not see if I can bring Madame, your wife, 
to Paris to stay with you here?" Mme. Loyson urged 
gently. 

His eyes brightened; but a minute afterward he 
shook his head. *^Ma femme est tres simple — she 
reads not, she writes not. How could she get to 
Paris? And — there is no money chez moi, for trav- 
eling." 

SOT 



SMALL THINGS 

Of course Mme. Loyson put her hand in her pock- 
et ! This elderly husband and wife should be togeth- 
er. "I'll send for her," she said cheerfully. "I'll get 
her for you !" This is the sort of human thing that 
the great organizations, busy with feeding all Poland, 
or arranging leave areas for the United States Armyy 
really can't stop to attend to! But little un-red- 
taped, gentle helpings can. (By the way, we people 
at home might help in this particular Helping, for 
some of our own men will probably find their way to 
that friendly fireside. That's why I have mentioned 
Mme. Loyson's address.) The old weaving woman 
was brought to Paris to see the gradually failing hus- 
band, and with her coming he ceased to fail and be- 
gan to get well. But before she came, he spoke : '^Ma 
femme — ^is a hopefulness. She has always hope. Me 
— I have no hope. I desire not to have any hope. 
It would be far worse than death for me, Madame."* 

"Hope of what. Monsieur?" his hearer asked — 
puzzled by the words and the look in his face. Then 
he told her why he was afraid of hope. 

He had a daughter — "ma petite file" he called 
her, though she was eighteen. There had been a son^ 

208 



"MARCHING GAYLY'^ 

but he had died just before the war; so all they had 
left, he and his wife, was the girl, ^Hres jolicy tres 
douce! Of an intelligence, Madame." 

Mme. Loyson was silent. 

"I had left them in Rheims — ^my wife and my little 
girl. I was with my company. ... It was in the 
morning. My wife said to my little girl, 'Run, petite, 
to the patisserie and bring us a loaf of bread.' She 
gave la petite fifty centimes. Ma ftUe, she went. 
She ran, so gay! to the baker's. Madame! Never — ■ 
never, from that morning, have we seen her. She 
returned not. My wife waited for bread for de- 
jeuner; she looked from the windows, she was of an 
impatience. She looked, but she saw not ma file. 
She became of an anxiety. She hastened herself to 
the baker's. Ma file was not there ! My wife was of 
a distraction. She searched — she searched ! She ran 
— she asked. And it came midi — and some one said 
to her, 'I saw Mademomoiselle — en train to go with 
some German soldiers; they were pulling her — they 
were carrying her.' , . . They took her, Madame, 
my little girl, to the trenches. Never have I seen 
her, never has her mother seen her, since that 
morning when she went to buy bread for dejeumer, 

209 



SMALL THINGS 

Ma feimne ceases not to hope that she will return. 
She cares not how la petite come back. She de- 
sires only that she comes. La mere hopes, always. 
Madame, je nw suis trompe: I do hope. I hope she 
is dead." 



VIII 

"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

THERE are all sorts of thoughts about the war 
in the minds of Americans in France, but 
there is one very clear thought, from which all 
the others spring. In it is rooted the Purpose that 
has taken the United States Army across the ocean. 
One of our soldiers summed up this basic thought to 
me the other day, in the Y. M. C. A. canteen at Aix- 
les-Bains. He was on one side of the counter and I 
was on the other; he was young, and I was old; he 
was smiling, and I — ^was not; he was entirely and 
instinctively confident in the outcome of the war, and 
so was I. 

He said, briefly : "It's damned silly." 

"What is silly.?" I asked him. 

**Not the fighting," he explained, grinning ; "that's 
bully ! I lap it up. Can't get enough of it ! I mean 
the getting into such a mess in the first place. Why 
didn't we knock Germany's head off forty years ago, 



SMALL THINGS 

when she began to lay pipe for this sort of thing?" 

"I suppose we trusted her," I excused the Allies. 

He nodded; "Yes, we did. We were polite to a 
snake. We were a lot of Sunday-school children! — 
too confoundedly decent. That's why I say 'damned 
silly.' This whole business was unnecessary. I," he 
said, "have a wife and baby in America; and I was 
making a good living. Yet here I am, over in France ! 
Of course there is nothing for it, now, but to stamp 
the beast out of existence — and we are going to do it. 
Our army is in the scrimmage to put Germany wise, 
and we'll stay here until she's licked out of her boots 
• — believe me! It's only a question of sticking it out," 
he said joyously; "and you can bet on the United 
States for that. But when I think of Nelly and the 
Kid, and my real estate business in Cahfomia (which 
has gone to pot), I say it's damned siUy. But, gee, 
Fm glad Fm TiereF* 

Damned silly. ... 

Not the fighting, but the necessity for fighting. 
As for the fighting, when there is a conflagration 
the work of the firemen is anything but silly! But 
who started the conflagration? What cow kicked 
over the lamp, and set the world on fire? Was it 

212 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

the German Emperor? If so, Europe was "silly," 
because she permitted such an emperor to exist. 
Was it Militarism which gave the kick? Then Civ- 
ilization was "silly," because it fostered Militarism. 
Did comfortably stabled Nationalism upset the lamp 
of Patriotism? In that case Humanity was "silly." 

Our fighting men, who are helping to put the fire 
out, are asking themselves these questions, and 
choosing one or another of these causes as their 
"cow." But regarded as "causes" of the eiFect, 
there isn't much to choose between as to their fool- 
ishness. So, as my young man said, the war was 
inherently unnecessary — 

But . . . "We're going to stick it out." And 
. . . "Gee, I'm glad I'm here!" 

There is the whole situation: the Thought, and 
the Action springing from the thought, and the 
Joy of the action ! 

We human creatures make a leap forward when 
we recognize the humiliating irrationality which 
brought us to this pass. We Americans made a 
still greater leap forward when we determined to 
do our part in "putting Germany wise." But the 
greatest gain for all of us — French, English, Italians, 

213 



SMALL THINGS 

Americans — is when we can declare that we are 
grateful for the chance to die 1 Only by these three 
steps — ^which the Californian had so blithely taken — 
can humanity reach a height where the "silliness" of 
which Germany is the surpreme embodiment, shall be 
forever destroyed. 

Of my soldier's choice of adjectives there can- 
not be two opinions ; the elderly, anxious woman and 
the young, confident man were one as to the "damna- 
bleness" of the present state of things. . . . We 
agreed that it was due to the failure — up to July, 
1914 — of the civilized world to recognize the sig- 
nificance of the German mentality; we had been 
polite to a snake. We agreed, also, he and I, in 
the certainty that American soldiers would "stick 
it out ;" and also in being profoundly glad that the 
United States is in the "scrimmage." 

But it seems to me, as I listen to French and Eng- 
lish and American opinions about the World Fire, 
that my soldier's realization of its original "unneces- 
sariness" is growing, in the minds of all fighting men 
— and what that realization may mean when applied 
to Democracy, is full of hope for the allied nations. 
Some say this saving recognition is growing in Ger- 

214 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

many, too. But as to that, I am ignorant. In spite 
of all the rumors of Germany's discontents, I 
have not heard so far — this is May, 1918 — anything 
which justifies this hope. Apparently the German 
people love their chains. They seem to be the willing 
slaves of their monstrous and unhumorous William. 
So, for the present, we had better not count on Ger- 
many to recognize the wickedness or the "silliness" of 
what she has done. The stir and yeast of democratic 
Idealism may be going on in Germany, but it isn't 
obvious to us. Yet just in proportion as the Allies 
feel it, and recognize the irrationality of war, per se, 
do they look forward to a time of reconstruction — 
socially, politically and morally — which will put an 
end to war. 

When I see the Idealism of our soldiers, and their 
self-sacrifice and courage and determination, and 
think of what is going to happen to us during that 
time of reconstruction — in suffering and in joy, and 
in the understanding of Democracy — I can hardly 
wait to hear the thundering tread of the Allied Vic- 
tory, which is burring toward us! 

As for the price of defeating Germany, my charm- 
ing CaHfomian and a million other American soldiers 

215 



SMALL THINGS 

are perfectly willing to pay it. They say — some- 
times with slang, sometimes with white lips and angry 
eyes, often — oftenest, I think — ^with laughter: *'I'm 
glad to be here !'' 

"I'm having the time of my life," they say, over 
and over. Once in a while a man adds laconically, 
"Maybe I'll never see America again." There is no 
affectation in such assertions, and no pose of heroism. 
They state a commonplace: "Maybe" . . . Some 
of the young men who said "maybe" to me in March 
will "certainly" never see America again. They 
were killed in the March offensive. I find myself 
wondering if the "NeUies" in America will acept the 
"certainty" as nobly as the husbands and fathers 
accepted the "maybe." If so, then our women will 
indeed finish the work which was given their men to 
do! 

I feel very sure of the quality of America's ac- 
ceptance, because of the self-sacrifice and devotion 
which I know there is in the United States. But I 
notice, also, in Americans in America (not in Amer- 
icans in France) a sort of excitement. It seems to 
be the excitement of the "bleachers," if I may use 
an illustration, not the businesslike calmness of the 

216 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

diamond. In France, there are no bleachers ; every- 
body is in the field. If the people at home are ever 
really caught in the Horror — if our houses are 
shattered by bombs, our girls raped, our old men 
and babies and mothers murdered, I don't think we 
shall be excited. I think from Maine to California 
we shall say, individually, just what my soldier said : 
"We'll stamp the Beast out." But first we must 
recognize, as our soldiers have recognized, the kind 
of thing we are fighting. When we do that, we 
shall be as ready to pay the price as was the Cal- 
ifornian. 

Our men are by way of naming the Thing, 
"Beast;" but I don't think the word bears analysis. 
Beasts are not vile, in the sense of being abnormal, 
though they may be dangerous. As I have learned 
more of the German mentality as expressed by Ger- 
many's methods of making war, I hav-e come to feel 
something strangely terrifying in the abnormality of 
its viciousness. 

"The Powers of Darkness !" some one said to me, 
when Paris was shaking and rocking under bom- 
bardment, and babies were being blown to pieces in 
their cradles. The phrase stands in my mind as omi- 

^17 



SMALL THINGS 

nously explanatory of my soldier's "gladness," and 
of his sober, unexcited certainty, that Germany will 
be smashed. Perhaps I can make this feeling about 
the **unhumanness" of the Boche mind clearer if I 
tell a little story. I tell it not because of its newness 
— for many such stories have been told — ^but because 
of its significance in this especial connection. I wish 
I could give my authority for it, but I have been re- 
quested not to. I may say, however, that the author- 
ity is beyond question. 

A company of soldiers, following hard on the 
track of some retreating Germans saw, nailed to a 
stable door by a single spike, a cat. The poor 
creature, clawing, writhing, yowling, spun round and 
round on the torturing nail. One of the men saw it, 
and swearing with rage and disgust broke from the 
ranks, ran to the door, jerked the spike from the 
poor little body, — and was instantly blown up by the 
bomb on the other side of the door — a bomb to which 
the impaled cat had been attached. The importance 
of this incident is not, of course, in the bomb, or 
even in the poor, agonizing little animal, because 
War is inherently cruel and ingenious. The inge- 
nuity and cruelty in this particular expression of 

218 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

"frightfulness" was only a little more perfect than 
ordinary. The real and sinister significance of the 
story lies in the fact that the Germans had recog- 
nized and counted upon a moral impulse — and used 
that impulse as an instrument of destruction. . . . 
The Powers of Darkness! 

Ever since Samuel Butler, in "Erewhon," crystal- 
lized his misgivings about machinery, there have been 
people, here and there, who have felt, vaguely, that 
mechanical perfection was a menace to the Race as 
well as a hope. Perhaps because there cannot be a 
hope without a menace; one implies the other. At 
any rate, once in a while a few people said to each 
other, "Is it possible, that instead of raising wheels 
and cogs to the level of man, we are lowering man 
to the level of wheels and cogs? Can mechanical 
perfection go too far?" Then came the War, and 
immediately many people said, "It has gone too far 
— in Germany." Certainly the Cat, and several 
other happenings in Flanders, declare that German 
genius, using the creative impulse as an instrument 
of destructiony and selling it for a price, — has be- 
come the Prostitute of the world. Germany, like 

219 



SMALL THINGS 

any other harlot, has sinned against the Holy 
Ghost. 

I have heard many stories of cruelty, some of 
which I have been obliged to believe; but I have 
heard nothing which inspired me with such terror 
as this story of the clawing, screeching kitten, and 
a man's pity, pulling the trigger to blow out his 
own brains. Pity ! — the crown of our hard-won 
struggle up from the slime from which we all have 
sprung — a slime into which these highly intelligent, 
cat-torturing people are returning ! Apropos of the 
cat story, I heard the following conversation between 
two Americans. One said: "Machinery has created 
a materialistic civilization. Germany is only a little 
more materialistic than the rest of us. We are all 
tarred with the same stick." 

"Yes," the other agreed, "but our salvation lies in 
the fact that Germany is the object lesson of the 
world. Shje has been going down to her own particu- 
lar Hell for four years, but every step of the way she 
has been calling back to us, 'except ye repent, ye 
shall all likewise perish !' And / believe we are going 
to sit up and take notice," he ended, cheerfully. I 
believe so, too. I am sure that these cruel, ingenious 

220 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

people cannot involve us in their own destruction — 
unless, in fighting the devil with "fire" — for there 
must be reprisals — we allow our own idealism to be 
consumed. 

But in what pure energies of the soul the Allies 
are wrapping themselves, to escape being scorched 
by the poisonous flames! So, because we have been 
warned by that "except ye repent," I am not afraid 
for America. Nationally speaking, the Idealism 
which has carried us to Europe will save us from our 
own mechanical perfection ... it is better than any 
gas mask that was ever invented ! 

I have told the story of the cat, only to explain 
why the American soldier is having "the time of his 
life!" Such joyousness of purpose, without the hope 
of gain, shows that he is safe in his armor of Ideal- 
ism. 

This IdeaKsm has formulated itself in a sort of 
creed, which, stripped of the slang in which it is 
often concealed, our men are continually reciting: 
"I believe in this War, by which the American is 
helping to save the world; I believe that Nelly and 
the Kid will suffer under the terror of it, but will 
die rather than fail fathers and husbands ; I believe 

221 



SMALL THINGS 

in the noly Spirit which prompts the soldier to save 
the little, agonizing kitten — and in the communion 
and fellowship of the allied nations, who will make 
Liberty everlasting." 

This is what Americans believe, over here in 
France, and we have not one instant's doubt that this 
black moment of the present will brighten into an 
immortal dawn in which these "Powers of Darkness," 
who use divine instincts as implements of death, will 
slink away to their own perpetual night. 

But there is so much to do before the Day — our 
der Tag! — ^breaks, and the German shadow flees 
away ! So much for our army in France to do ; and 
just as much, perhaps more, for people at home to 
do. So far as we can judge over here, America is 
rising splendidly to her opportunities of sacrifice. 
How could she fail to rise, with the example of 
France before her — the example of the unexcited, 
plodding commonplaces of four years of dying 
to save the world for the French Nelly and her 
baby.? . . . Our American Nelly (and the real- 
estate business which has supported her) has only 
just now arrived at a poignant understanding of 
what it means to lose life, so that Life may be saved. 



* WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

And only since they have been on French soil have 
American soldiers awakened to the knowledge of 
how literally France and England and Belgium have 
put their bodies between us and weapons so deadly 
as Pity turned against itself. Now that our men 
have awakened to this, they are absolutely certain 
that the Spirit which animates the Allies must win, 
or humanness must die. 

To see this certainty in the faces of fighting men 
is soul-shaking. And I have seen it in so many of 
these hard, lean, tanned American faces! Some- 
times, when I have looked into the eyes of our sol- 
diers — merry, impudent, honest eyes ! — I have felt 
I was seeing the resurrection of our whole nation 
from her complacency of comfort and peace. For, 
contrasted with that divine fury which leaps for- 
ward to pull the crucified kitten from the door, our 
old, careless, contented materialism is seen to be a 
couch on which our Idealism had been drowsing into 
sleep. It has been very roughly jolted from that 
couch, and as a result men are "falling over them- 
selves," as one boy said to me, in their eagerness to 
reach the Mad Mind that fastened the fuse to the 
dying kitten. These men of ours are rushing with 

223 



SMALL THINGS 

all the banners of the Dawn against the Powers of 
Darkness ! 

With our soldiers, and leaping along beside them, 
is another army — the great civilian army of service. 
In other words, that very impulse which the Ger- 
man used to make the decent human creature pull 
out the spike (and be blown to atoms), that im- 
pulse of life-saving is marching with our soldiers' 
terrible and necessary impulse of life-extermination. 
The Relief Organizations in France are simply or- 
ganized Pity, lifting itself up to combat the Powers 
of Darkness, which would be glad to use its driving 
and holding force to destroy it. 

No one who looks on at this movement of the 
Spirit can possibly doubt the outcome of the War 
(I am not speaking militarily; as I have said, that, 
in the shape of an Allied Victory, goes without say- 
ing) ; I mean the spiritual outcome, which some war- 
hating people have questioned. The spiritual result, 
which will make us in love with Death, whether our 
rendezvous with him is in the trenches in France 
or in desolate homes in America — that spiritual out- 
come, built upon the dead bodies and the living souls 
of our men, is so certain that we do not stop to 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

question it, any more than we stop to wonder if 
to-morrow's sun will rise. But we shall not delay 
the inevitable Dawn by telling ourselves the truth 
about the Dark, or facing the cost of our under- 
taking. 

So let us admit, first, that we battle not merely 
against flesh and blood — flesh and blood are the 
smallest part of it ! Nor against principalities and 
powers — autocracy all over the world is toppling 
into the ruin the Germans have invited for their 
own Government. We battle against the moral ruin 
of the Race. Against the assassination of God. 
We fight to save, not just the little home in Cal- 
ifornia, but the home idea of the entire world. And 
the cost to us will be very great. We must cast into 
our War Chest our whole living. The comfort we 
cast in is a small matter; the individualism we must 
resign is smaller still ; the money is of no consequence 
whatever. It is Life which we must give, and Love 
which is dearer than life; yes, everything must be 
given, except our sacred honor, which, indeed, is 
the War Chest itself! ... 

Sometimes, as I read the month-old American 
papers over here, I feel a little frightened, for 

225 



SMALL THINGS 

though they state, what we all know, the precious- 
ness of our Victory — the value of a saved 
world — they don't say much about all these 
things which make up the price. I wonder why not ? 
I wonder if any one thinks that we Americans are 
afraid to hear the price stated? If anybody thinks 
that of us, let him look at our men over here ! Then 
he will have no misgivings. He will know that we are 
rich enough to hear the price named, and not blench. 

The French and English nations — not merely their 
soldiers, but their women and children — ^have heard 
the price without wincing, and are in no uncertainty 
as to their spiritual solvency. 

Nor is there any uncertainty as to ours ! 

Listen to an American soldier's expression of 
readiness to pay the "price" of a saved world : "The 
people at home are up to their knees in this war. 
They've got to be up to their chins, or we won't 
win it. The Germans are not men, they are — " He 
paused, and looked at me with strange eyes. "I don't 
know what they are. We are fighting — Something; 
I haven't any name for it. It is — Hell, I think. 
And, by God, if it takes every mother's son of us, 
we^re cowmg out on top.''* 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT'* 

Here it is, you see — "The Powers of Darkness!" 
But the Allies will come out on top of Hell. No 
one who has lived among the French people can 
doubt that they recognize "Hell." They know what 
they are fighting; they have realized the unhuman- 
ness and the abnormality which the Germans have 
let loose upon the world. I do not mean merely that 
statesmen and politicians know this, or even that 
French soldiers know it; I mean that the plain 
people, like ourselves, are entirely aware of the sin- 
ister mystery of it. The innkeeper knows that this 
war is not human ; the dressmaker knows it ; the taxi- 
driver, the blanchisseuse. To talk with these people 
about the German mind is to realize its abnormality. 
The man who ran the elevator in my hotel; the 
woman who mended my trunk strap ; the pretty girl 
who had fled from the war zone and fallen in love 
with a Belgian officer as soon as she reached Paris — 
they all had a perfectly clear understanding that 
Decency is fighting Indecency ; Love is fighting Lust ; 
Day is fighting Night. And that is why they face 
the cost of Victory so calmly. Sometimes, however, 
they ask, "Does the United States understand this, 
too.?" 

227 



SMALL THINGS 

"If you knew in America what we are fighting," 
an elderly Frenchman said, "you'd be ready to pay 
every cent you possess, and every drop of blood you 
have, to smash it — and call it cheap at the price." 

Many, many French people have said the same 
thing to me. "The Germans are mad ; they must be 
'^Scrase,*' they have said; "do you Americans realize 
that?" Then they would add some story to justify 
the "ecrase/' which made the cost of the crushing 
seem indeed "cheap" at any price ! As, for instance, 
the following (which I am told is authentic; I cannot 
vouch for it, but people who know much more than I 
do, say it is true). It illustrates Germany's attitude 
toward monogamy — that bulwark of Occidental civ- 
ilization : 

Translation of a document found on a German pris- 
oner by an English Corporal and by him given to an 
English Y. M. C. A. Secretary: 

Committee for the Increase of Population 

Notice No. 2875. 
Sir: 

On account of all the able-bodied men having been 
called to the colors, it remains the duty of all those left 
behind^ for the sake of the Fatherland, to interest them- 
selves in the happiness of the married women and 
maidens by doubling or even trebling the number of 
births. 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

Your name has been given us as a capable man, and 
you are herewith requested to take on this office of 
honor and do your duty in right German style. It must 
be pointed out that your wife or fiance, will not be able 
to claim a divorce; it is, in fact, to be hoped that the 
women will bear this discomfort heroically for the sake 
of the war. 

You will be given the district of Should 

you not feel capable of coping with the situation, you 
will be given three days in which to name some one in 
your place. 

On the other hand, if you are prepared to take on a 
second district as well, you will become a "Deckoffizier" 
and receive a pension. 

An exhibition of women and maidens, as well as a 
collection of photographs, is to be found at our office. 

You are requested to bring this letter with you. 

Your good work should commence immediately and it 
is to your interest to submit to us a full report of re- 
sults after nine months. 
22-3-16 

Comment on such a document is unnecessary. But 
one point should be emphasized: If an uncrushed 
Germany thinks of marriage in terms of national 
efficiency, the danger to the world would be that 
other nations, from self-preservation or perhaps 
from mere imitation, would explode into the same 
consuming flames of sensuality. So, naturally, "if 
it takes every mother's son of us," we are coming out 
on top. Perhaps Germany's degraded idea of Love, 

229 



SMALL THINGS 

has been the torch which has touched off Russian 
gunpowder ; at any rate, I read this morning in a 
Lyons paper, an extract from a Russian paper ; here 
is the translation of four sections of this appalling 
document : 

1. From the age of 18 years, every yomig girl is de- 
clared to be national property. 

2. Every young girl who has reached the age of 18 
years is required, under penalty of severe punishment, 
to register at the bureau of free love, at the Commis- 
sariat of Public Assistance. 

3. Every registered young girl has the right to 
choose a concubine husband from among the citizens 
of from 19 to 50 years. The man's consent to this 
choice is not obligatory. The wife of the husband 
chosen by the young girl has no right to formulate any 
protest against this choice. 

4. A permanent list of men to be chosen will be kept 
at the same bureau of free love. The men will also 
have the right to choose a companion from among the 
young girls who have reached the age of 18 years. ^ 

To save the world from this sort of thing, to check 
a conflagration which would consume Love — can any 
"price" be too high.? 

Chesterton tells another story (which seems to be 
very well vouched for) to still further justify the 
price — but even to hear of it leaves a scar on the 
^ See footnote at end of chapter. 

230 



«*WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

mind. A girl's naked body, he says — a Utile, slim, 
fourteen- or fifteen-year-old body — was slung up on 
a beef hook outside a butcher's shop, and left to rot 
in the sun because no man could take it down and 
escape a bullet in his own head or breast. There 
was another story, told by a soldier in a Y. M. C. A. 
canteen, from which the mind recoils, as the body 
recoils at the lick of a flame. Some one, — an Amer- 
ican woman, — ^had said that the whole matter of re- 
prisals was terrible to her. "I can't bear it," she 
said, wincing; ''I can't bear it! — ^that the Allies 
should be like the Germans ! We know that they do 
horrible things; but for us to retaliate, by doing 
the same sort of things, would be to bring the same 
sort of destruction upon ourselves!" A group of 
soldiers, French and American, had been listening to 
her, and they discussed the matter with some in- 
terest (and extraordinary spiritual insight, she told 
me). One young man was silent. He listened to 
what she said, but his face darkened and his lip 
drooped. A httle later, when she was alone, he came 
up to her. 

"That was a fine talk you gave us, Madame," he 
231 



SMALL THINGS 

said; "but, me — all that I'm living for is to torture 
a German to death." 

"Oh, don't say that !" she implored him. 

He shrugged a little contemptuously. "Voiis n' 
comprenez pas.'' 

"But — but — " she protested; "you must not be 
like — themr 

"I must be," he said; "I — " He hesitated, then 
told his story. He had a friend. "We went to 
school together," he said; "we'd been friends since 
we were bom. Eh Bien; I found him just alive in 
the trench. So I shot him." 

"What 1" she said, faintly. 

"Yes. I killed him. They had cut out his tongue, 
and they had taken a splinter of wood, and pinned it 
on his arm. So I shot him." 

My friend was speechless. For my part, when she 
told me the story, I refused to believe it. That 
seemed to me the easiest way out of it — ^just to say, 
"It isn't true!" But afterward, in speaking of the 
incident to an American who has made a very ex- 
tensive investigation of many alleged atrocities, I 
found I could not reasonably say, "It is not true.'* 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

"The man may have been 'stringing us,' " I said 
hopefully. 

But this gentleman shook his head. "The prob- 
abilities are that he told you the truth. Even if he 
didn't, even if this particular incident isn't his own 
experience, he stated facts. I have known many 
instances of the torn out tongue. The pinning it to 
the man's arm, I have never happened to see or 
hear of; but my own seeing and hearing is a detail. 
The Mind which conceives the thing, and many others 
of a nature of which I cannot speak to you, — that 
Mind, does exist. And until it is known and ac- 
cepted as a factor in this war, we shall not be able 
to *get in up to our chins,' because we sha'n't really 
understand what we are fighting." 

Our American soldiers "understand." "/ know 
what Germany stands for," one lad said to me, "and 
by God, she's got to be smashed!" 

There is no price too high to pay for that smash- 
ing, and we are ready to pay it. That is what the 
Californian, talking to me across my counter, 
thought ; and that was why he said, so quietly, "It's 
damned silly — ^but I'm glad to be here." 

We are all glad. Our soldiers in France, and 



SMALL THINGS 

the civilians at home. . . . The cup of sacrifice and 
suffering is being held out to us — the cup of trem- 
bling, the cup of tears, and of blood! "Drink ye 
all of it!" Civilization says to us. And we put out 
eager hands toward that sacramental draft ; we take 
the Cup — and give thanks! 

LA FOLIE RUSSE. 

* See page S30 for note reference. J'ai sous les yeux extrait 
du journal Isvestia. Le journal Isvestia, comme vous le savez 
peut-etre, est I'organe des Soviets. Or, une certaine citoyenne 
Ferodowa y expose un projet sur la socialisation des femmes. 
Les socialisation des femmes? Eh! oui. II s'agit de mettre 
les femmes en commun. Et ne vous hatez las de dire que Mme. 
Ferodowa est folle, et que son projet ne sera jamais adopte. 
Je vous repondrais que deja il est applique dans les districts 
de Kowalinsk, de Kolgino, de Louga et de Saratof. 

Ce projet a huit articles. Passons sur les quatre premiers, 
qui declarent "inviolable" toute jeune fiUe ages de moins de 
dix-huit ans, et prononcent des peines severes contre qui I'out- 
ragerait. 

Mais je copie les quatre articles suivants: 

1. A partir de Page de 18 ans, toute jeune fille est declarde 
propriete nationale; 

2. Toute jeune fille ayant atteint Page de 18 ans est tenue, 
sous peine de punition s6v^re, a se faire engeristrer au bureau 
de I'amour libre, au commissariat de 1' Assistance publique; 

3. Toute jeune fille enregistree a le droit de se choisir un 
mari concubia parmi les citoyens de 19 k 50 ans. Le consente- 
ment de I'homme a ce choix Test pas obligatoire. I'epouse du 
mari sur lequel tombe le choix d'une jeune fille, n'a le droit de 
formuler aucune protestation contre ce choix; 

4. Une liste permanente des hommes a choisir est constituee 
aupres du meme bureau de I'amour libre. Les hommes aurons 
6galement le droit de se choisir one compagne parmi les 
jeunes fiUes ayant atteint Page de 18 ans. 

Ainsi, toutes les jeunes fiUes russes seront inscrites sur une 
liste, oil les hommes feront leur choix. De meme les hommes 



"WE'LL STAMP THE BEAST OUT" 

seront inscrits et les jeunes filles jetteront leur devolu sur 
eux. Qu'ils, soient maries ou non, cela n'a pas d'importance. 
L'epouse ne devra 61ever aiicune protestation. La citoyenn^ 
Ferodowa a resolu d'installer de la Siberie a I'Oural et 
d'Arkhangel a Odessa, one vaste chiennerie. Liberte, pudeur, 
vielles rengaines, inutiles accessoires de I'odieux regime isariste. 
Et, lisant ces divagations dans le journal des Soviets, je pense 
aux imprecations qui montaient vers Raspoutine. Je songe 
aussi que le Revolution russe parut a beaucoup d'entre nous 
une aurora. 



IX 

THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

SO many, many prayers just now in France! 
An American overheard one of them the other 
day, and repeated it to me. It went up to 
God on the Feast of Corpus Christi, from an old, 
old church, fragrant with incense, and shadowy and 
cool, and with sunshine sifting through the stained 
glass windows, and falling in red and blue and violet 
pools on the time-worn stone slabs of the floor. The 
great altar blazed with candles ; and from the choir 
the high, clear treble of the boys floated upon the 
melodious bass of the chanting priest, like white 
lilies on dark waters. Before a shrine of the Blessed 
Virgin, a young, rosy-faced woman in a white cap 
had lighted her single candle ; she held in her arms a 
little baby — oh, a very little baby, perhaps three 
weeks old; its tiny face was still faintly crinkled, 
like a pink poppy which has just opened from its 
calyx, and its small hands were doubled into vaguely 

236 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

wobbling fists. The mother, holding it very close 
to her breast, her cheek against the downy head, 
her eyes beseeching the maternal Figure behind the 
candle, whispered (indifferent to the praying world 
around her), "My little one, pray for thy papa, 
that he may return to thee; pray! Pray hard, my 
small one! Pray for all the papas of all the little 
babies, that they may return. Oh my little one, 
pray! Pray hardr' 

The candle flickered and guttered in the draft; 
the baby's round eyes regarded the dim arches melt- 
ing far above its head into the vast darkness of the 
roof. Its aimless, flower-like hands stretched out to 
the plaster figure in the blue, gold-starred mantle. 
The American, listening, prayed hard, too, that the 
papa might return. I suppose all the people in the 
church were praying for some "return." I wish I 
might know that the prayer of the mother in the 
white cap, with her rosy cheek against the baby's 
hair, will be answered. . . . Yet I am sure that, 
though the answer may not come just as she wishes, 
it will come, to all the praying mothers and wives in 
France — but perhaps in a way which only the older 
women will recognize as being an answer at all! It 

237 



SMALL THINGS 

may be only in the consciousness of being all together 
in anxiety and grief. The consciousness of the fel- 
lowship of sorrow! ... It was an old woman, a 
peasant woman, who lives near a brown, lazy canal, 
who showed me this wonderful and tender truth about 
sorrow. She made me understand that it is easier 
to bear pain if others are bearing it too. And that 
explained to me how they keep on living, these 
broken, suffering women, who have given to France 
all that is really worth living for — the Living Love ! 
One of them, by the way, the other day, on an 
operating table in a Paris hospital, mentioned what 
she had given. She was an elderly woman, who had 
been terribly injured by a shell from the Great Gun 
which so impartially knocks the heads off public 
monuments, and smashes houses, and kills women and 
children saying their prayers in church on Good 
Friday. This old woman, shattered and nearly dead, 
was carried to the hospital to have her leg ampu- 
tated. The President of the Republic, visiting the 
blesses, paused for a friendly moment at the operat- 
ing table where the poor old soul was waiting for 
her ether. I don't know what he said to her, but 
this is what she said to him: "Un de mes ills a ete 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

tue; le second est ampwte, Je vais VHre moi aussi; 
et j'aurai paye mon tribut a la patrieT' Which 
might be put into English : One of my sons has been 
killed ; another has had an amputation, which I, also, 
am to have; but I will have paid my tribute to 
France ! 

The old lady by the canal had paid her tribute, 
too, and was just as proud and grief stricken as the 
dying woman on the table; but she had had that 
strange, high answer to prayer which has come to so 
many broken hearts in France — the knowledge that 
shared suffering may be shared peace. . . . 

It was very hot in Vitry-le-Fran9ois, where we 
had to wait hours for the train that was to take us 
to Paris,— there is nothing much hotter than a rail- 
road station, where the tracks stretch out over a 
flat land quivering with heat! 

"Let's hunt," some one suggested, "for a cooler 
spot." 

"We might try the equator," some one else said, 
gloomily. 

This was not encouraging ; but we loaded up witK 
our bags and hold-alls, and trudged oif to hunt for 
the cooler place. It was noon, and except when an 

239 



SMALL THINGS 

ox team came plodding slowly along the dusty road, 
the silent, sunny street showed no sight of life; the 
whole town seemed to have shut itself in behind its 
blue 'volets. But we did manage to find a little 
dark shop, three steps down from the blazing pave- 
ment, where our bread cards secured for us some 
chunks of black bread, and a box of sardines, and 
a tin of so-called comfiture, — heaven knows what it 
was made of! Carrots and sawdust, I think; the 
only sweetness about it was the label, which con- 
tained the word Sucre. Then, with our food in our 
hands, we sallied forth to look, as Sylvia said, "for 
coolth." And we walked, and we walked, and we 
walked. And it got hotter, and hotter, and hotter. 

"Just think," said that wretch Sylvia, "of a land 
where there is such a thing as soda water T* 

"Is it heaven?" said the other girl. 

"That will do for a name, but I call it America, 
because they are the same thing," said the lover of 
soda water. 

Then, just as we were about to give up, and go 
back to the roasting railroad station, we saw in the 
distance, between the trunks of the poplar trees, the 
gleam of water. A canal! 

240 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

*'Now aren't you glad I made you come?" de- 
manded Edith. And we admitted that what was left 
of us, after melting away for half an hour, was glad. 

We sat down on the green bank of the canal in 
the flickering shade of bordering poplars, digging 
our heels into the grass to keep from sliding down 
into the brown, slow current below us ; when we got 
a little cooler, we broke off bits of our dry bread, 
borrowed Edith's jackknife to spread them with 
cheese and comfiture, and wished we had something 
cold to drink. "But if you say 'soda water' again," 
Sylvia was warned, "you will immediately be thrown 
into the canal." 

"How about trying that house behind us.'' They 
must have a well?" some one said. 

"Full of typhoid bugs," the Small Person ob- 
jected, professionally. 

"For what did I pay out good money to Doctor 
Townsend for typhoid inoculation before I left home, 
if I can't drink their water?" Edith retorted. And 
went off to "borrow a drink." So that is how Tve 
got acquainted with the old woman who lived in 
the house, and who had come to know one of the 
deep things of life, a thing hidden from the wisdom 

241 



SMALL THINGS 

of Peace, but revealed, I am beginning to think, by 
the foolishness of War. 

"She asks us to come and see her," Edith said, 
returning with a pitcher of the "typhoid bug" water. 
"I told her we were Americans, and she said the 
Americans were brave gens." 

^'You are brave, to drink that water," Sylvia said 
with great displeasure. 

We did not accept the invitation at once ; we sat 
there on the grassy bank watching a canal boat push- 
ing its blunt, black nose through the water-weeds, 
and the dragonflies zigzagging back and forth across 
the slow, shimmering current. Suddenly, above our 
heads, a greater dragonfly came — one that darted 
and circled and dived through the blue heights of the 
May sky, then lost itself in a dome of glistening 
white clouds — ^but this dragonfly made a strange 
whirring noise. We looked up at it, and wondered 
if the man on its back could look down and see us, 
sitting on the bank, eating bread and cheese. 

"The old lady is a corker," said Edith. "When 
she gave me the pitcher of water she told me about 
her son — killed, you know. And she insists that 
we must come up to her 'salon, to repose ourselves'." 

^42 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

"Her 'salon'? The whole house is about as big 
as a soap box !" 

It was indeed a tiny place — very old, and rather 
crumbling about its foundations, with a red tiled 
roof that had mellowed with the years into bronze 
and oKve green, and blackened here and there with 
creeping lichens. But summer rioted to its very door 
in perfume and color, for it was cuddled down into its 
flower garden — roses and wall flowers and carna- 
tions. Later, we walked among them with their 
owner, compared their American and French names, 
and then went into the "salon," which was almost 
filled by an enormous bedstead, on which, puffing 
nearly to the ceiling, was an enormous feather bed. 
A marble-topped washstand held our old lady's din- 
ner, which she invited us to share, with a politeness 
which was incapable of the vulgarity of an apology 
for its frugalness; we declined — ^I hope as politely 
■ — on the ground that we had just had our bread and 
cheese — "and her nice cold-water Bugs !" said Sylvia 
under her breath (in English). There were only 
two chairs in the salon, on which, by virtue of our 
years, the hostess and I sat, but the rest of the 
American Authors' Service had to stand up. 

243 



SMALL THINGS 

The old woman looked about, her bright black 
eyes twinkling with smiles ; it was like seeing a winter 
apple smile! Then she waved a hospitable hand. 
Said she : "It is of a smallness !" 

"Which makes housekeeping easier," said I. 

''Beaucoup! Beaucoupf" said she. Then she told 
us of herself; she lived here, quite alone. The Ger- 
mans had come in 1914, and immediately tout le 
monde — then she said something which seemed to 
mean "took to its heels.'' She, however, had not 
taken to her heels ; instead, she hid in the cellar, and 
when the enemy found her, she spoke only German 
to them, "so they let her alone, being" — ^here she 
shrugged expressively — "that she was an old 
woman." Yes; she lived quite alone, and worked in 
her garden, and dug, and planted, and prayed for 
France. That was all she could do now, dig and 
pray. For her son (her only son, and she was a 
widow), her son — ^here the twinkling smile fell from 
her face and you saw the ravages of grief which it 
had hidden; her -fils unique — sa seule joie — sh^ 
paused ; then pointed speechlessly to a mirror on the 
wall. We looked, and saw a blue soldier cap hanging 
on one corner of it. "Motz ^Z^," she said. 

£44j 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

"Vive la France^ Madame!" said I. 

"Oui! Ouil" she said, her chin shaking pitifully. 
Then, somehow, she steadied it, lifted her old head, 
and smiled again, the rosy winter apple smile. ^^Vive 
VAmeriquer she said, and wiped her eyes. Then, 
very quietly, she spoke those words of the spirit that 
showed me how prayers for only sons, and 'single 
joys,' and young fathers at the front, can be an- 
swered: "There is not, Madame, a house in France 
where there is not one dead ; therefore — " She made 
a gesture of dismissing the subject: '*Did Madame 
observe my carnations .f^" she said. 

Quite gently she shut her grief away from us. She 
was able to bear it, because after all, every one was 
grieving; "there is not a house in France." , . . 
That v/as why she could go on living, taking 
care of her carnations, and offering the sweet hos- 
pitality of her "salon" to wayfarers eating bread 
and cheese on the grassy bank of the brown canal. . . . 

Her exquisite courtesy and humanness made me 
think, as all of us Americans over here have been 
thinking, of the way in which the French people com- 
bine graciousness with kindness. We are kind, too, 
in our way, at home; but we have not the gift of 

M5 



SMALL THINGS 

expressing it as these people do. We lack "gra- 
ciousness," I suppose. At any rate, the graciousness 
of the French is making an impression on some of our 
soldiers, and who knows but that we may achieve it, 
to some extent, nationally, when we get through 
stamping out the ungraciousness of the Germans.'* 
For thoughtful people must see that the German 
"no-manners" — a deficiency recognized with more or 
less good-natured annoyance by all civilized peoples 
for certainly the last fifty years — this lack of gra- 
ciousness constitutes a sort of sign-post, marking 
the down-hill road along which they have traveled 
in their own social and domestic life, a road which 
has now brought them and the world to the un- 
speakable "mannerlessness'' of their war. Which 
reminds me of something I saw last week in a Lon- 
don newspaper in regard to German reputation on 
these lines. It was just the laconic report of a police 
court. ... It stated that Louis Sternberg, a lea- 
ther merchant, had brought an action for libel and 
slander against Thomas Wren, boot-polish manufac- 
turer. Wren having alleged that Sternberg (who was 
a Russian) was a German! 

"After hearing the case, Mr. Justice Lush said: 
246 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

*W?uit "viler msidt could he made agamst a man 
than to deliberately call him a German?^ He there- 
fore awarded £250 damages to the Russian." And I 
recall here the revealing remark of a German, a mem- 
ber of a Commission which, before the war, was 
traveling in America: "Yes," he said, "we found 
your railroad cars very comfortable; — except the 
sleeping cars. Our wives don't like to climb into the 
upper berths." 

The more I hear and read of individual German 
behavior in this war of theirs, the more I feel that 
stories like these, which are told more or less in jest, 
are seriously accurate. And I am sure that the pres- 
ent behavior of the German nation is the natural and 
inevitable result of the rank egotism of the individual 
German, an egotism which has made the whole people 
offensive to what might be called the "refined na- 
tions." As an illustration of this (and to justify 
Mr. Justice Lush), I remember something that hap- 
pened several years ago in Berlin. ... It was a 
rainy day; the mud on either side of the stepping- 
stones of the street crossing was deep and black and 
sticky. An American lady, starting to cross the 
street from one side, was met by a German officer, 

247 



SMALL THINGS 

who, at the same moment, had. started to cross from 
the other side. They both paused abruptly. The 
officer was in his "shining armor" — ^his spotless white 
uniform glittered with braid, his saber clattered, and 
his varnished boots shone. The American, as it 
chanced, was in her best clothes, too. (However, 
that is a detail ; had she been in rags the thing that 
happened would not have been less astounding to 
an observer coming from any civilized country.) 
They stopped midway, these two — the American 
woman and the German man — midway on the little 
bridge of cleanness which spanned the mud. There 
was an instant's pause ; the lady looked faintly sur- 
prised : the officer in uniform looked fiercely annoyed ; 
said he: 

"I wait!" 

Said she: 

"/, also, wait.* 

He was so amazed at her answer, so startled that 
any mere female thing should thwart him, that in- 
voluntarily, before he realized what he was doing, 
he stepped down from the clean crossing into the 
mud. Upon which this lady swept him a magnificent 
bow, and left him standing there, his varnished boots 

248 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

plastered with mud, looking after her, and (she was 
sure!) damning her in his heart for an impudent 
American woman! 

Now, this is a small happening. At the time it 
was only funny, for my friend could not take with, 
any personal resentment an affront offered by an. 
animal. Every one of us knows "that the well-bred- 
man will not insult us, and none other can.** So the 
American lady only laughed. But she wouldn't have: 
laughed if she had realized of what that mannerless-^ 
ness was a prophecy. . . . One hears of a German^ 
soldier kicking a French woman in the stomach ; andi 
one realizes that the kick was inevitable. That sol- 
dier was merely the officer in the varnished boots, a, 
little more incensed than when he stood in the mud. 
in Berlin. I do not believe any Frenchman would 
have waited for a lady in her best clothes to step 
into the mud to let him pass ; and I would stake my 
life upon it that no American would do such a thing 
to any woman — a great lady, or a poor, old, ragged 
beggar woman ! An American man, in his senses, 
simply couldn't do such a thing. It is in this cer- 
tainty that I find courage to believe that though 
this war, like all wars, is a thing of mud and helL 

249 



SMALL THINGS 

and animalism, it cannot drag the Allies down to the 
depth of moral mud in which the Germans are wal- 
lowing, for we are not so low to start with — ^we have 
some manners! I feel this more poignantly than 
ever before, because it seems to me so obvious that 
in Germany manners have been one of the most im- 
portant factors in "making the man." The Prus- 
sian mind was ready to wallow in filthy cruelty, 
because at home, in peace, it was essentially rude. 
And cruelty is just the next step from rudeness. 

But here somebody will probably say: "They are 
not all cruel! It is only the Military Government 
that is cruel. Think of the kindly, music-loving, 
Christmasy south-Germans, the sort of people to 
whom Mr. Britling sent that wonderful and beautiful 
letter; could one of them kick a woman in the 
stomach?" 

If I had been asked this question four years ago, 
I would have said "NoT' as indignantly as anybody 
else. I cannot say "No" now, nor can I say, as so 
many of us at home have been saying, that it is the 
German Government which is kicking women in the 
stomach, and not the German people. . . . Let me 
tell you something that happened only last week: 

S50 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

Three German prisoners were being questioned by 
their American captors. One was a teacher of math- 
ematics in his own country, and the other two were 
officers — so we may safely say they were of the "bet- 
ter class." When the interrogation was concluded, 
the American officer said, evidently with kindly in- 
tention, "Do the people of Germany know that the 
United States has no grievance against the people 
of Germany? Do they realize that we are merely 
fighting the military machine, the Government, of 
Germany?" 

Instantly the three Germans were on their feet. 

^^Das ist ei/nsF^ 

Here were three educated and presumably respon- 
sible men claiming their share of the abominations! 

Furthermore, it is not one part of Germany more 
than another which wallows in the orgies. We can 
no longer exclude Mr. Britling^s kind south-German 
folk. It has been most dismaying to find that the sol- 
diers and officers who are doing unspeakable things, 
are from all over Germany. What does it mean-f* 
God knows ! The terror, the horror, the sick nasti- 
ness of what they are doing is a pathological fact. 
We may trace the sickness back, symptom by symp- 

S51 



SMALL THINGS 

torn, to one cause or another ; hut one of the causes, 
which seems to me to account for much of the pres- 
ent national degeneracy, is that long-continued habit 
of bad manners, which especially reveals itself in 
the way German men regard women. They love their 
own women — their wives, their mothers, their 
daughters, — and no one can doubt their real kind- 
ness to them. But, so far as I have been able to 
make out, they love them and are kind to them as 
they might love and be kind to children, or to intel- 
lectually inferior persons. To the German male, a 
woman is a useful and pleasant and necessary thing ; 
but her opinion is not to be taken seriously if it con- 
flicts with a man's opinion. Her intellectuality, such 
as it is, is interesting or amusing or valuable, in its 
place ; but its place is not in intellectual controversy 
with men ! Not unnaturally, the men are rude — if you 
would call more or less kindly indifference to other 
people's opinions rudeness. And no one who has seen 
anything of German domestic life can doubt the 
indifference. It will not be a bad thing if the 
women in America will read, just now, a novel by 
Mrs. Alfred Sedgwick, called "Salt and Savor." 
From the point of view of literature, I could wish it 

252 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

had been written with more art. It would have been 
more impressive if all the EngHsh people had not 
been perfect, and all the Germans had not been 
vile. There are still degrees of goodness and 
badness in this crazy world, and if the book had 
admitted this, it would have been a truer and bigger 
book; but I am sure that the essential fact in it is 
true — namely, that the physical and mental degra- 
dation of German women is one of the roots of the 
spiritual degradation of German men. One reads 
this novel and puts two and two together, and sees 
how invariably they make four: . . . Woman is a 
pleasant animal to the man, and the man, by long 
indulgence in the selfishness of bad manners, is a 
complete egotist. There is the two and two. When 
the animal is obstinate, or ugly, or unpleasant, the 
following story is the inevitable "four." (The story 
is, I may add, vouched for by careful investigation.) 
Official Report of a Belgian Electrical Engineer 
made for the French Government: 

On the 9th of September, at Weerde ... we saw 
the corpses of a man and woman . . . the neighbors 
told us the woman had been enciente. She had been 
violated by German soldiers and had her wcmb cut 
open by them in her husband's presence. He had 

253 



SMALL THINGS 

previously been bound to the banisters. They had re- 
moved the unborn child. ... I asked the (neighbors) 
if any of the soldiers who did it were drunk, and they 
said they were not. . . . The neighbors told me it 
would have been her first child. . . . They did not do 
anything to the woman to kill her, except opening her 
womb and violating her. They did not kill her first. 

Of course we don't know — the laconic, stunned 
words of this Belgian engineer give us nothing but 
dazing facts — ^we do not know just what caused this 
outburst of ferocity on the part of the Germans. 
Perhaps the husband, before he was "bound to the 
banisters" to watch his first baby torn from its 
mother, had fired upon the invaders. Let us sup- 
pose, for the sake of argument, that that was the 
case; even so, can the rest of the story — (and I have 
spared you one incredible detail) be anything but 
madness — the madness of men so long educated in 
egoism that imagination has been extinguished.'' 

I know just how one winces, "curls up inside," 
as a girl said — in reading stories like this. But 
the stories must be told, because, unless we Amer- 
icans "curl up inside," unless we face the fact that, 
if the Allies do not win, then what has happened in 
Belgium and northern France will happen in Mas- 

254 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

sachusetts and Virginia, happen all along the At- 
lantic Coast from Maine to Florida, for, if she gets 
the chance, Germany will, without question, do to us 
just what she has done to people in France and 
Belgium. When we realize our full debt to France 
and England and Belgium for having held Germany 
off until we — foolishly trustful people! — could get 
ready to fight — when we realize our debt to them, for 
protecting our unprotected coast with their own 
bodies, we shall proceed to pay that debt with all 
the compound interest of sympathy and blood and 
money that a generous People can give ! 

"Under the lee of the little wood, 

I'm sitting in the sun; 
What will be done in Flanders 
Before the day is done? 

Under my feet the springing blades 

Are green as green can be; 
It's the bloody clay of Flanders 

That keeps them green for me. 

Above, beyond the larches 

The sky is very blue; 
It's the smoke of hell in Flanders 

That leaves the sun for you." 

I could tell you many stories to illustrate how our 
allies have kept the sun in our sky by walking in 
darkness themselves ; but the story of the officer wait- 

255 



SMALL THINGS 

ing for the American woman to step into the mud, 
and the story of the unborn baby and the husband 
tied to the banisters, sum up the whole incredible 
diagnosis of a sick, mad-dog nation. "It's got to be 
stamped out of existence T That is the way some 
of our generous, pleasant, kindly soldiers put it; 
mother-loving men, who wouldn't want to "stamp" 
anything out of existence! This reminds me of 
something rather funny that happened a few days 
ago. A company of our boys — splendid fellows! 
good fighters, sound Americans, recruited largely 
from that part of the Middle West settled about 
two generations ago by Germans — met a convoy of 
German prisons slouching along through the mud 
on their way to the rear. At the sight of them, our 
men burst out into a torrent of reproach and in- 
Tective — vn German! "The prisoners," the report 
said, "lifted their heads in amazement when they sud- 
denly found themselves assailed trenchantly and 
abusively in their mother tongue by the newcomers. 
The torrent swept them with contempt for their 
obedience to such a misconceived hound as the Kaiser, 
for their taking sides with the Prussian devils against 
all decent people the world over, and for making 

256 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

themselves the scum of the earth by their methods 
of fighting, so that their relatives in a free country 
had come four thousand miles to wipe them off the 
face of it." 

I don't mind the "invective" — I like it ! But when 
our lads talk about "stamping out," I do quail. It 
sounds too "German." I know we must fight the 
Devil with fire, but there is a terrible danger of 
getting burned ourselves — unless, indeed, we all — 
fighting men and non-combatants — ^hold tight to 
those things of the spirit which the Germans began 
to discard about fifty years ago. Of course, we 
must not forget the young husband tied to the ban- 
isters, but somehow, soTnehow we must remember for 
ourselves "whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are of good re- 
port" — we must remember these things, and we must 
"think on them" for our own safety. Poor, hide- 
ous, mannerless, vicious Germany has not "thought 
on them!" We know what she has thought of — 
power, gain, selfishness ; things that are ugly, things 
that are vile, things that are not of good report — she 
has thought of pleasure, of lust, of cruelty ; and be- 
cause Germany "thought on these things," the old 

257 



SMALL THINGS 

mother weeds her garden alone, and the young 
mother stands before her candle and says, "Pray! 
Pray hardy my little one!'^ 

You cannot imagine — or at least I could not have 
imagined — ^how we Americans over here are helped 
to hold on to the things of the spirit by what 
civilian America is doing in France. For side by 
side with the necessary and terrible animosity, which 
says, *'We will stamp the Thing Germany stands for, 
out of existence," has sprung up something "lovely,'^ 
and "pure," and of most marvelous "good report." I 
mean the whole great Army of Idealism. It has its 
various divisions, which are labelled the Red Cross, 
the Salvation Army, the Y. M. C. A., the K. of C, 
and many small Relief Organizations that are sup- 
ported privately, but they are only divisions — the 
impulse is a unit. Truly 

The Son of God goes forth to war — 

to war against War ! He goes forth to bring the love- 
liness of purity and kindness and even "manners'^ 
into the hell that Germany has let loose upon a world 
which perhaps needed to be taught to what its grow- 
ing materialism might lead it, — namely, a mechan- 

^58 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF TEARS 

ical civilization, devoid of spiritual reactions. As I 
look at what American Idealism is doing over here, 
I say to myself, 

"SURSUM CORDA!" 

Yes, it is frightful — the fear which consumes the 
little, anxious mother on Corpus Christi Day; a 
soldier, dead in the trenches with his tongue cut out ; 
a frantic husband tied to the banisters — frightful 
— frightful! So frightful that we are saying to 
ourselves — driven back from the pleasant, respect- 
able, materialistic Christianity of the churches, that 
only the Christianity of Christ, only the Idealism 
of Jesus, can save the world! And it will save it, 
for idealism can destroy materialism. . . . 

A wonderful thing is happening over here, right 
under our eyes — and some of us little sectarian peo- 
ple in America don't see it even yet : That Idea^ which 
is to save the world, is not marching in France wnder 
any one banner of creed. That is why we can call it 
the Christianity of Christ! The significance of this 
creedlessness is beyond words. The things of loveli- 
ness and good report are not valued by their labels, 
"Catholic,'^ or "Hebrew," or "Protestant." (Oh, 

^59 



SMALL THINGS 

creeds seem such little, little things in the thundering 
tramp of armies !) Except in some pathetically nar- 
row minds, these things of good report which are to 
save the world have no tags of belief fastened to 
them. They are all. of them expressions of the mind 
of Jesus. The creeds in which, for its safety, Chris- 
tianity first wrapped the baby Idealism — ^necessary 
no doubt in the beginning — began to smother it, to 
kill it almost. Now, suddenly, all those swaddling 
clothes are burst, and Christ Himself marches with 
the Y. M. C. A. workers, the Red Cross men, the 
Salvation Army lassies, and the Young Men's He- 
brew Association! 

These are dark days over here. They have been 
dark at home. But, let us open our windows toward 
the East. . . . The Day breaks! The shadows flee 
away ! Let us lift up our he art si 



X 

"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL'' 

"Well, Fm just plain scared!" a Y. M. C. A. girl 
said; "let's have some jam and Educators." 

"Educators! Where did you get Educators?" 
said the other Y. M. C. A. girl. 

"Oh, from home," the first girl said. She brought 
out the Educators and some strawberry jam, and 
then they both sat down on the floor to eat them, 
pausing once in a while — a spoonful of jam in mid- 
air — ^when the bang of the barrage was a little 
louder, or when there came the terrible detonation 
of an exploding bomb. 

"Jam from home, too?" 

"You bet! Do you think you could get stuff like 
this over here?" 

Then, by the light of a candle leaning sidewise 
in a tumbler (for all the electric lights had been 
turned off), and with the consolation of a cigarette, 
these two girls talked over their day in the canteen, 

^61 



SMALL THINGS 

— ^interrupted from time to time by those sudden 
BANGS ! It was a quarter to twelve. The sky was 
velvet black, and the stars were very faint, but there 
was no mist. "So," said the Educator girl, judicial- 
ly, "it's a bully night for a raid." 

"I don't mind raids as much as shelling," said the 
other. "That scares me stiff ! Give me a light, will 
you.f^" — they put their young heads together, and a 
glimmer leaped from one cigarette to the other — then 
— Crash! The windows shook. "Ooow!" said one of 
the girls, "that was near." 

The town in which these two workers were sta- 
tioned had been shelled for several days, and the last 
three nights there had been air raids. Both of the 
girls were tired; one had come in from her canteen 
at 11: 80 — about fifteen minutes before the raid be- 
gan; the other had just crawled out of bed, where 
she had been for two days with a temperature of 102, 
from pure fatigue ; "No bug," she said, calmly. She 
was the one who had said that she was "plain 
scared." 

While the raid was going on, they huddled to- 
gether on the floor, ate jam and Educators, smoked, 
planned their work for the next day, and discussed 

262 



"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL*' 

the psychology of Fear. . . . ^'Whi/ is being shelled 
nastier than being bombed ?'* 

"Don't you think," some one said, "that it may be 
because a bomb from an airplane seems a little more 
accidental? It hits any place. A shell is supposed 
to be accurately aimed, so when it blows you up, your' 
annoyance is more personal?" 

"Well," said the owner of the can of Educators, 
"rm not crazy about either of 'em." 

"Makes the U. S. A. look sort of good, doesn't it?" 
the other girl inquired maliciously. 

After that they talked about their work. 

The significant thing about this scene, which 
might (except for the bombs) have taken place in 
any woman's college in America at twelve o'clock 
at night, was that, though "plain scared" and 
"scared stiff," the idea of leaving their job never oc- 
curred to either of these girls. And this, I think, 
sums up very accurately the work of American 
women in France just now. 

Endurance. 

There wasn't any pose of heroism in eating Edu- 
cators, and jumping at the crash of a bomb. These 
two girls were hungry and tired; they were scared, 

263 



SMALL THINGS 

and said so. And they both agreed that, in an air 
raid, "home looked sort of good" to them. 

But they had not the slightest idea of going home. 

Their conduct was not what you would call 
"showy"; it was just the expression of an ages-old 
characteristic of their sex ; the quality which mothers 
have, and always will have. It was the Everlasting 
Feminine which is rooted in the most elemental in- 
stincts. ... 

Some two months ago I was asked to write a paper 
about Y. M. C. A. women over here. It was to be 
called "The Startlingly Heroic Work of Women in 
France." It seemed a simple enough thing to do ; so, 
like Dr. Syntax, I began my "search for the pictur- 
esque." 

I did not find it. 

I found something which seems to me very much 
better. I found an infinite capacity for toil ; I found 
patience, and quick understanding of other people's 
feelings (meaning by "people," "soldiers"). I found 
a ready friendliness, and extraordinary executive 
ability; I found good housekeeping, good cooking, 
and good courage. I found these things in every 
canteen. Of course I found the reverse of these quaU 

264 



«FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL" 

ities, too ; I found a few indolent women who could 
not drudge, and who wanted excitement ; a few flirta- 
tious women, who made eyes at everything in trous- 
ers ; a few bad tempered women, who would not take 
orders, and did not know what obedience meant. Far 
be it from me to deny the existence of these unpleas- 
ant ladies ! But where, if you please, on this distract- 
ed terrestrial ball are such persons not to be found? 
Of course, these women ought not have been allowed 
to leave their own country and quarter themselves on 
poor France, but their presence here only reflects on 
the inefficiency of the Y. M. C. A. War Council in 
choosing its personnel, — ^both men and women; it 
does not, as some people seem to think, stigmatize 
the Y. M. C. A. workers as a class among the women. 
On the contrary, these undesirables were a very 
small minority; it was among the majority that I 
looked for instances of heroism. But just as I 
thought I was about to pick a fine, rosy apple of 
the "startlingly heroic," I found a prosaic slice of 
bread and butter! — merely the old business of "en- 
during." 

I confess to having been, just at first, a little sur- 
prised, which was unreasonable in me, for the pro- 

265 



SMALL THINGS 

saic is what Nature has arranged for women ever 
since the Race began to stand on its hind legs. Per- 
haps before that, for when the male apes banged 
•each other on the head, the female apes probably 
grabbed the babies, and watched the scrap from the 
tree tops ! In other words, when it comes to the 
"Unusual," men have done it, and women have enr- 
diired it. 

But who is going to deny that "enduring" needs 
any less nerve than "doing?" Not I, — for I have 
seen our women in France ! 

And as I watched them, I realized that their main 
value in this poor, terrified, crazy Europe is that 
what they are doing is rooted in the ordinary and 
the elemental, instead of in the unusual and the spec- 
tacular. Their work is not bucking Nature ! It 
could only fall down if it did, — if things were turned 
around, and women were placed on the firing line,, 
and men poured out chocolate behind canteen coun- 
ters, the result would be very upsetting to civiliza- 
tion. Which is only a rather long way of saying 
that the overseas War Work of American women is, 
generally speaking, fine, but not spectacular. Our 
girls in France are rarely in the limelight. They are 



"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL" 

not Deborahs, nor Joans of Arc. Which is just as 
well, for if women should ever turn into the excep- 
tional Woman, the race might cease. It is the nor- 
mal women who keep us steady. And look at the 
"normal" things which our girls are doing over here ! 
They are standing, red-faced and perspiring, over 
the most exasperating stoves you can possibly im- 
agine, — stoves which often "simply won't draw!" 
They are making enormous quantities of chocolate, 
and then handing it over counters which it takes con- 
tinuous efforts to keep clean, — for the men "do slop 
so !" They are sorting out passionately desired Amer- 
ican mail in Y.M.C.A. post offices. They are at desks, 
and at typewriters, and at telephones, in the various 
headquarters of the Association. They are scrub- 
bing floors, and playing games, and putting up tur- 
key red curtains in chilly huts. They are washing 
stacks of dishes (how they used to hate dish-washing 
at home!), and peeling potatoes, and selling chewing 
gum, and jollying homesick soldiers. They are get- 
ting up vaudeville shows, and dancing, and singing. 
They are offering maternal advice upon stomach 
aches, and promising to write home and tell his moth- 
er just how he looks, and how much he has gained in 

267 



SMALL THINGS 

weight, and that she must not worry about him, be- 
cause that worries him ! 

Our girls, Red Cross girls, Salvation Army lassies, 
Y. M. C. A. workers, are doin^ all these things, oc- 
casionally under dangerous conditions, very fre- 
quently under conditions of great discomfort. They 
live in cold, damp, dirty places; they eat ill-cooked 
food, and sometimes not quite enough of even that! 
In other words, they are doing all the things that 
all the women of all the generations (except a few 
shirkers and parasites) have done all the time, since 
the world began! As a result, one looks on, and 
says : 

"Thank God that woman's part in this dreadful 
business of war is still normal." 

For man's part is not, and cannot be. Man's part 
is often — terribly often! — "spectacular," as well as 
necessary and splendid. But it is not normal for 
men to spend their time killing other men in the 
awful limelight of the trenches. So I come back to 
what I said in the beginning: I found, in my search 
for the "startlingly heroic" in the Overseas work of 
our women, something much better than the start- 

268 



"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL" 

ling; I found the ordinary, glorified by its own high 
purpose. 

Of course there have been individual instances of 
the "startling"; individual instances of superb her- 
oism on the part of women. I could tell you things 
done by the Salvation Army girls, — simple, honest, 
wonderful lassies, — I think, perhaps, the most won- 
derful of all our women workers ; I could tell you of 
the heroism of the Smith Unit; of women driving 
ambulances under fire, of girls directing convoys of 
soldiers in the hell of a bombed district; splendid 
deeds, all of them! — but occasional. Not the deeds 
by which the Race lives ; not that prosaic bread and 
butter of conduct, which feeds Humanity. The 
steady, regular work in American women overseas 
has been just the old, old race-work of endurance. 

How is the following for endurance.? — ^I went to 
see a Canteen rather near the front and stayed in a 
hotel, — ^well, as a French hotel can be the best on 
earth, so also it can be the worst! This was the 
worst. I have tried many hotels in my native land — 
traveling from Alaska to Florida, and from Kenne- 
bunkport to Santa Barbara, to say nothing of Eu- 
rope, — so I may fairly claim to have seen a pretty 

269 



SMALL THINGS 

good assortment of hotels, and to be qualified to ex- 
press an opinion. They are, all of them, Waldorf- 
Astorias, — compared to this terrible place of dirt 
dampness and evil food. In it, all last winter, livedo 
worked, and enjoyed life, a Connecticut girl (her 
people came from Old Chester, so I feel a personal 
affection for her) ; here she lived without any way 
of keeping her room warm, though it was so damp 
that at times the water trickled down the walls ; here, 
in the freezing darkness of winter dawns, she broke 
the ice in her water pitcher, and dressed; then ran, 
shivering, through snowy mud, to her canteen 
(which was at least warm, thank Heaven I The U. S. 
A. sees to that). 

In the canteen, which is a big hut covered with 
tarred paper, on which the nail heads glisten in the 
sunshine like decorations, — in this hut she worked 
from eight A. M. until eleven P. M. I need not speak 
of the work in detail; it is pretty generally 
known, and it is practically the same thing in all the 
Y. M. C. A. posts and canteens. It is not the detail 
that counts, it is the endurance, — the gay, friendly, 
uncomplaining, tm-self-conscioios endurance, which 
never flagged, — and was never spectacular ! 

270 



«FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL" 

But when you come to think of it, she was only 
doing the work her grandmother did (I speak ge- 
nerically), only doing the work of the Race Mother. 
She, the Race Mother, has always been sleeping any 
way and in any place, if circumstances made it neces- 
sary ; she, too, has risen in the winter darkness, and 
given food to her house and a portion to her maid- 
ens; she has often given pretty poor food — though 
if she could cook it herself she did her best to have 
it good. And she has worked from that early rising 
until "anywhere from eight to eleven.'* 

So the dark-eyed, smiling, tired girl from Connecti- 
cut has been living the Race Life, for the sake 
of our soldier boys. And they love her, not because 
she is spectacular, but because she is normal! And 
how they do love her — ^hundreds of her, — for she 
has come from almost every state in the Union. 
(Which is one of the cheerful things about this 
dreadful moment in the world; just because our 
men and girls come from every state, our country 
is ceasing to be "states," and is becoming a State.) 
She — this Y. M. C. A. worker who is helping in the 
work of the national amalgamation — is displaying 
many other kinds of endurance than the cold, dirty, 

^71 



SMALL THINGS 

hotel type; some of them harder, I think, than the 
hotel. Endurances just as fine and necessary but 
even less "startling" than canteen work. 

I know one girl who sits in an office of the Y. M. 
C. A. headquarters in Paris, and pounds on a type- 
writer all day long. "I never had touched one of 
these old machines till I came over here," she told 
me; "of course I was crazy to go to the front; but 
they said they were wild for typewriters, so I just 
buckled down and learned how to do it. I hate it like 
the devil," she added, sighing; "but what was the 
good of fussing? It seemed to be up to me — for 
somehody had to do it. So I just said, 'Oh, damn ! I 
guess it's my job.'" (I can imagine how that ex- 
pletive, from Y. M. C. A. headquarters, will make 
some people at home jump!) 

Just think of all the generations of women who 
have come head on against the realization that 
"somebody's got to do it!" — and, by the grace of 
God, have been able to add, "It's my job" (person- 
ally, I prefer to omit the expletive). Sometimes 
I think the girl who does this particular sort of 
job (there are hundreds of her, too) is even more 
necessary than the woman who washes dishes until 



"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL" 

she nearly drops, or tries to control her temper when 
the men secretaries are particularly stupid and try- 
ing and religiously narrow-minded! The girl who 
pounds out: "Your letter of the 14th instant duly 
received. I would say in reply that the consignment 

of Fatimas shipped by you on the SS is not 

yet to hand," etc., etc. — this girl may not realize 
that the comfort of a thousand men is being aided 
by her pounding fingers ; she may not have the par- 
ticular kind of imagination which would illuminate 
her task for her and show her what she is really do- 
ing; but if she is a woman of sense (and so far as I 
have met her over here she distinctly is!) she must 
know that the business of the whole Y. M. C. A. would 
stand still without her ; that the girls who are doing 
the "spectacular," interesting work of making dough- 
nuts on the firing line, or scrubbing floors near the 
front, could not fry or scrub unless she poked up 
some slow transportation office to send the lard and 
the scrubbing brushes. She ought to know that the 
chief cook and bottle washer of the whole Y. M. C. 
A., the grave, burdened, steady executive himself, 
would be brought to a dead standstill if she (or her 
kind) preferred to be or tried to be startlingly he- 

^73 



SMALL THINGS 

roic. The Y. M. C. A. girls in Paris, and in the 
large or small headquarters all over France, who 
endure the drudgery of clerical work, fill one with 
just as great admiration, just as true reverence for 
duty well done, as any canteen worker stationed (as 
they are all crazy to be) "at the front." I do wish 
they could know how fine and how necessary is the 
old feminine quality of endurance, which makes them 
stick to their typewriters ! But apparently most of 
them don't know it ; most of them are rather dismal 
about it. They seem to be half ashamed of it : "We're 
in no danger," some of them say, with gloomy self- 
contempt — ^which is very funny, but perfectly sincere. 
They say they do nothing but "sit tight" at their 
desks, when they might be handing out chocolate un- 
der shell fire, or racing a motor ambulance to a Poste 
de Secours! So they might, — ^but what would hap- 
pen to the Y. M. C. A. if they did only what they 
liked? I wish these steady, necessary girls, a few of 
whom smoke (never publicly, I think) ; and who 
love to make sober folk jump with their occasional 
"bad word" — I wish they knew that we are just as 
proud of the courage of their endurance of the dull 

274 



"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL" 

job, as we are of the courage that meets shell fire 
with composure. 

Apropos of that occasional and rather self-con- 
scious "bad word," and the childlike satisfaction of 
flourishing a cigarette case, as if to say, "See what a 
bad boy am I !" — I am struck by the fact that men- 
tally and temperamentally there seems to be a great 
gulf fixed between the men and the women workers. 
Many of the former are dismayingly narrow-minded 
(they call it being religious) ; a few of the latter 
are, — ^well, we'll say "wide minded"; I suppose they 
call it being free. The narrow men represent the 
Past — and the lost opportunities over here of the 
Y. M. C. A. The "wide" women represent the future 
— full of danger and beauty and bad taste and hope ! 
Or you might put it that the men stand for Faith, 
and the women for Works. (Of course this is a gen- 
eralization; the majority of the workers stand for 
both. But unfortunately it is the minority which can 
give any movement or organization a black eye). 
Naturally the difference in the mental processes of 
such men and women makes it sometimes a little hard 
for them to appreciate each other. I heard a man say, 
with a significant roll of his eye towards a group of 

275 



SMALL THINGS 

petticoats: "I don't see how any human creature, 
man — or woTnan, — can smoke, and preserve his — or 
her — self-respect. For my part," he added, "I be- 
lieve that I received my body, beautiful, from God, 
and I must return it to Him as beautiful as when 
He gave it." 

He was not very beautiful, this little man, but he 
was 'i^ery good, and honest, and devoted, and hard 
working — for religious narrowness does not interfere 
with work! But the effect of his remark upon that 
group of petticoats can be imagined. . . . 

One of the women, also rolling a significant eye, 
said : "/ don't see how any one can want to close the 
Canteen on Sundays, so he can attend divine service. 
For my part, I believe there is no diviner service than 
waiting on the soldiers !" 

Of course these excellent workers are boring to 
each other; but from the soldiers' point of view, the 
"wide" girls do less harm to the reputation of the 
Y, M. C. A. than the "narrow" men, some of whom 
are so concerned with the mint, anise and cumin of 
sectarianism, that they overlook the weightier mat- 
ters of service and freedom of opinion, — thereby lay- 
ing the Association open to the charge of considering 

276 



"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL'* 

itself wiser than its Master, and holier than its Lord. 

But I must go back of the normalness of the girls' 
service. There is another race-old loveliness in their 
work in France, which has impressed me very much. 
It was particularly in evidence in one of the large 
Leave Areas, where several thousand men came to- 
gether for a brief rest after months of the strain of 
the trenches. This service started in with being ex- 
citing and stimulating and full of enthusiasm ; but it 
merged gradually into what somebody called, wearily, 
"dead horse." It was the work of entertaining the 
soldiers. 

"It is dreadfully dull to be funny all the time,'* 
one girl said, simply. 

It was the dullness which women have endured since 
first there were babies in the world, or worn-out hus- 
bands, or little growing brothers and sisters. 

"I must amuse them!" tired, bored women have 
been saying for — ^how many thousand years ? It isn't 
spectacular to pile up blocks on a nursery floor, — 
nor is it to get up shows in a Hut, day in and day 
out, pull off "sing-songs," or play baseball with a lot 
of fellows until you are tired enough to drop. It is 
not showy to do things like this, but it is blessedly 

277 



SMALL THINGS 

useful. Consequently hundreds of our girls are in 
the "Entertainment" bureaus. And the gratitude of 
the soldiers, put into proposterous slang, or quite 
inarticulate, is touching to a degree. 

Just here is a very interesting and significant 
thing about our men; in all the intimacy which is 
inevitable in games, "freshness" on their part is prac- 
tically unknown. It is the rarest thing in the world 
that a man has to be snubbed. "I would rather dance 
with these boys than some of the men in our set at 
home," a charming girl told me. 

There is another "endurance" which is to be seen 
here, as well as all the world over in offices and shops 
and factories and schools and homes. I mean the 
toil of planning other people's work, the drudgery of 
the executive. There is power with it, and power is, 
of course, interesting ; but take it day after day, and 
it is not exciting. It is a heroism of the boy-stood- 
on-the-burning-deck type, but it isn't "spectacular" ! 

There is still another way in which our girls are 
doing wonderful, and not showy work ; namely, hold- 
kig their tongues. That doesn't sound like anything 
remarkable, but you just try it ! Try working in a 
canteen with other girls who have nothing in com- 

278 



"FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL" 

mon with you but the English language, and the Pur- 
pose which has brought you all to France ! Try tak- 
ing orders from a "secretary" of possibly indifferent 
manners and probably different theological views! 
Try seeing your little job suddenly taken out of your 
hands by a soulless Paris Office, and given to some- 
body else, and you obliged to get a move on for an- 
other job! Do you think it would be easy to hold 
your tongue? "If you think so, heaven is your 
home," said one girl, morosely. Certainly this nerv- 
ous, wracked, irritable, fermenting world does not 
foster such self-control. I don't mean to say that 
our girls are angels of sweet temper; they are not! 
They are very human, and some of them make it 
extremely hard for that same "soulless," frequently 
blundering, but really well-meaning Paris office. But 
on the whole, they do hold their tongues, keep at 
their work, and endure — each other! I am inclined 
to think this is the hardest and the least showy 
thing our women are doing over there. 

But it, too, is an ages-old domestic quality. Think 
of all the generations of women who have held their 
tongues in the family circle! And it doesn't come 
easily; it has to be cultivated. It isn't easy for 

279 



SMALL THINGS 

human creatures, whether at home or abroad, to for- 
get themselves, to be gentle, to be courteous, to "suf- 
fer fools gladly" (and the person who doesn't agree 
with us is, I have noticed, always "foolish"). No, 
it isn't a usual thing, such endurance ; it is the Great 
Achievement ; it is not commonplace, — it is divine. 

And it is "heroic" ; but just in proportion as it is 
true and good, it is not spectacular. • . • 

So this was why I never wrote the paper upon 
the "Startling Heroic Work of American Women in 
France!" 



XI 

"THE REGAL SOUL" 

I FIND myself wondering at the absence of com- 
plaining over here. It is so natural to com- 
plain! ... Or it used to be. 
"Oh — how hot it is! I am almost melted." 
"Heavens! how I hate cold weather." 
"I'm so tired, I'm ready to drop, — and I've waited 
fifteen minutes for the trolley!" 

"The janitor in our apartment house is simply a 
demon ! He's never on hand when I want him. And 
as for the elevator! ..." 

Well! One needn't rehearse the complaints we 
all used to make in those days of unbelievable ease 
and peace, those days of childlike certainty that all 
Nations meant well toward us, and we meant well 
toward each other — even toward demon janitors. 
We know those old complaints. ... If the condi- 
tions in which they were made could only come back 
to us now, how lucky we should think ourselves ! To 

^81 



SMALL THINGS 

be bothered by a slow trolley would be mental lux- 
ury for people who are bothered, now, by a slow — 
slow — slow ocean postal service ; people whose hearts 
are squeezed dry with anxiety about sons and hus- 
bands whose letters don't come — and don't come — 
and don't come ! Yes ; we know those old "complain- 
ings," and very likely the French people knew them, 
too, before their world began to rock and reel, and 
janitors (or, as they call them, "concierges") were 
whirled out of apartment houses, whirled away down 
the straight white roads of France, that are torn and 
trampled now into quagmires ; whirled over these 
roads to desert places which were once green fields, or 
into villages which used to be so cheerful, but are now 
only heaps of crumbling stone and powdered mortar. 
It is hot in those "desert places," or freezing cold; 
and there are no "janitors" to make the roofless 
houses comfortable. Where the roads are not yet 
shell-blasted, they are apt to be jammed with a jos- 
tling, hurrying crowd of refugees. The panting, 
scared rush on those packed roads is never aided by 
the cheerful bang and rattle of a fifteen-minutes-late 
trolley. The "trolleys" on French roads are fifteen 
months late! 

282 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

I don't know that any one who has not been in 
a jam of fleeing people can quite grasp the pe- 
culiar horror of it — the little individual mind comes 
into crashing collision with the Collective Mind, and 
the single wincing body is banged by the enormous 
impact of the aggregate Body. The crash of that 
impact almost annihilates personality! Some Y. 
M. C. A. workers learned this by a few dazed hours 
of being part of a fleeing crowd. The experience 
which taught them how individuality is blotted out 
under pressure of the Mass came on a day of soul- 
destroying haste ; these women had been told to "get 
out" — to run! so to speak, for the town in which 
they had been working was cowering under air-raids 
at night, and being shaken by bombardment in the 
daytime. 

The idea of flight, which had been suggested to 
them, had also, it appeared, occurred to several 
thousand French people. At any rate, "evacuation" 
was terrifyingly general, and the one railroad station 
was besieged. These American women sat for hours 
on their luggage, waiting their chance to get through 
the pack of people, reach the gate into the train shed, 
and board a suffocatingly crowded train. They saw 

283 



SMALL THINGS 

the misery of it all — saw old men stumbling along 
with their old, crying wives; saw mothers herding 
frightened children ; saw boys trying to take on their 
young shoulders the family responsibilities of fathers 
now at the front — the Americans saw these things, 
but they heard ho complaints. 

(I think I will have to stop here in my story of un- 
complaining French endurance, to pay a little tribute 
to the same spirit in the Y. M. C. A. The organiza- 
tion — ^like every other organization in the world at 
this distracting moment, has of course made innu- 
merable blunders — but this story of endurance ought 
to make the people at home forgive a good many of 
them. ) 

It was so terrible, this pushing, trampling, surg- 
ing panic, in the railroad station, that one of these 
ladies, who had been elbowed and jostled, and almost 
trodden upon by this pitiful throng, for what seemed 
to her an endlessly long time (though I don't sup- 
pose it was more than an hour and a half) , suddenly 
had a vision of escape ! It came to her with a posi- 
tive pang of relief. She had in her pocket an Open 
Sesame ! It had been secured for her by Myron Her- 
rick, the one-time American Ambassador, known and 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

loved by the French people — "the dear Herrick," one 
French woman called him. Mr. Herrick had 
given this lady a magic wand. It had been tried only 
that morning at the American Express Company, 
and had secured the prompt movement of certain 
pieces of luggage piled, with other American imped- 
imenta, mountain-high in the baggage-room of the 
company. Why should it not be used now, to act 
as a sort of Flying Wedge through the dense crowd 
of French people? The Open Sesame was a letter 
from Ambassador Jusserand, requesting for the 
bearer the "courtesy of all officials in France." The 
fortunate possessor of the letter knew that it would 
open any gate for her and she almost gasped with re- 
lief: "Oh — the letter!" she said; "we can get 
through on that !" 

Then it was that the little Y. M. C. A. girl spoke : 
"Oh, no!" she protested,— "tio.'" 

"No ?" said the older woman, who was fumbling in 
her petticoat pocket for the letter, " 'No ?^ What do 
you mean.''" 

"Oh," said the girl passionately, ^^we can't get in 
ahead of the French people! — At least," — she cor- 
rected herself, for she was much younger than the 

285 



SMALL THINGS 

bearer of the letter, and of a modesty not always 
to be found in youth — "at least, I can't, because no- 
body in a Y. M. C. A. uniform can have any special 
privileges." 

The other, after the first instant of dismay, was 
able to say, "Oh, of course not! I — ^I hadn't real- 
ized," she tried to excuse herself. She had perhaps 
the excuse, of the mere animal instinct of self- 
preservation; she had acted on her reflexes, just as 
one blinks one's eye against a grain of dust. But the 
Y. M. C. A. girl acted on her reflexes, too — ^honor, 
and courage, and sacrifice! ... (I hasten to say 
that after the first shock of knowing that she could 
not get through the 'crowd by means of the letter, 
and carry her self-respect with her, the older woman 
was truly grateful to the little Y. M. C. A. worker.) 

So these tense, and perhaps trembling, women 
stood there, in the surging panic of the station, tak- 
ing their turn, and refusing to clutch at the "special 
privilege" of the Ambassador's letter. 

They held their breaths, I think, for they waited 
not only for their "turn," but for the chattering, 
gibbering laugh of the siren, which might at any 
moment sound high up among the quiet stars, or for 

286 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

the roaring crash of a bomb, falling on one of the 
roofs about them. There they sat until at last their 
"turn" came, and they were swept along in the push- 
ing, sweating mob of evacuees, and finally reached 
their train. And the Ambassador's letter remained 
hidden in the petticoat pocket of its owner! This 
will show you that the people at home have a right to 
be as proud of some of the American civilians as of 
American soldiers — for the spirit of that young Y. 
M. C. A. worker, who would not be saved "ahead of 
the French people," is, with all its mistakes, the 
spirit of the Y. M. C. A. 

The French women who have been coming over the 
roads these last weeks (without any Ambassador's 
Letters to tempt them into safety) women who have 
been running — running — running! — never, so far as 
I could learn, uttered a word of what could be called 
"complaint." Occasionally they stated facts. But 
that was all. They mentioned, laconically, that their 
world had come to an end. But such a remark was 
not in the form of a complaint. Generally it was 
spoken without tears ; almost always with eyes star- 
ing blankly and calmly into space, and with level, 
unexcited voices, 

287 



SMALL THINGS 

When I listened to those monotonous voices, my 
own eyes were blind, and I had no voice with which 
to speak my poor words of sympathy ; I could do 
nothing but put my arms around these calm women, 
and hold them close, and think of my "complaint" of 
Life itself, a complaint which in these heroic pres- 
ences I dared not utter. One big, gentle creature — 
not a refugee, but with a husband and son at the 
front — struck me one day, lightly on the shoulder. 
"Courage, Madame! CourageT' she reproved me, 
smiling with her brave, sweet eyes. Before such tear- 
less words, how could I either speak or weep? 

It was at a port "somewhere" that I saw most of 
these uncomplaining people. . . . They had come 
in hordes to Paris ; there they had been "sorted out," 
and shipped here or there, south or west, to places 
of safety and of relative comfort. They had expe- 
rienced (some of them for the second time) the dread- 
ful flight from their homes — from little houses with 
thatched roofs which had huddled happily about old, 
old churches, from beautiful chateaux, from small, 
dark rooms tucked away behind the boutique or the 
atelier. But, great or small, each one of the houses 

288 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

was probably, now, just a heap of crumbling mortar 
and splintered beams. 

The people had fled in every possible way — on 
railroad trains, when they could, like the Y. M. C A. 
workers; occasionally in motors; oftener in carts 
drawn by horses, donkeys, dogs ! Many, many, on 
foot. And by and by they had reached Paris. I saw 
them pouring into the Gare de I'Est, where the Red 
Cross had spread long tables heaped with good 
American food. They were haggard and dirty and too 
exhausted for speech. Sometimes the grime of days 
was channeled on their cheeks by slow-rolling tears. 

I think the old husbands and old wives were most 
heartbreaking to me; yet those motheis! — with 
babies, and bottles of old and souring milk; those 
lads, of fourteen or fifteen, pushing perambulators, 
or pulling toy express wagons packed with household 
possessions ; those growing girls, bending under enor- 
mous bundles, — one can't choose as to heartbreak 
among such mournful beings ! 

There were people loaded with quilts tied four- 
square, to hold what few possessions had been snatch- 
ed in the hurrying dash out of their houses — clothing 
and photographs, bird cages, and china vases, and 

289 



SMALL THINGS 

the best curtains ! You know what I mean, the sort 
of things we would all try to save if we were driven 
from our homes at^ perhaps, an hour's notice ; things 
often not materially precious ("my baby's rag doll; 
she died last winter") ; just little, worthless, price- 
less things! 

There were small girls hugging Teddy Bears; 
small boys with kittens, or puppies straining on 
pieces of string. , . . Women in the perils of child- 
birth, sick persons, and young children. . . . One 
very old man had lost all his possessions somewhere 
on the road ; he was so dazed and tired that he could 
not lift the bowl of soup I brought him to his lips ; 
and when I guided his shaking hands, the cup clat- 
tered against his tightly shut teeth, and his fright- 
ened eyes confessed that he had lost the power to 
swallow his food. As his old wife saw this sudden 
lapsing from the strength on which for perhaps fifty 
years she may have learned to lean, her poor, fat 
face, wrinkled and unwashed, puckered into crying — 
and slow, meager tears dropped steadily down on the 
bread she was eating. A boy whose rabbit had died 
just as he reached Paris, but who would not let the 
little limp, furry body out of his tired, shaking arms, 

290 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

looked up at the old, crying grandmere with aston- 
ished eyes. Perhaps he thought she was crying about 
the rabbit, and was surprised at such a tribute to 
his own sorrow. 

These are the people who are being scattered all 
over France, sheltered in all sorts of houses, with all 
sorts of people, and wondering, in a dazed way, 
whether they will ever see their own firesides again. 

In the port where the American Authors' Service 
is stationed, there are many such refugees ; some 
came in 1914, flying from that first rising of the 
gray tide of wild, unhuman cruelty, which cannot be 
dignified by the name of war. It is of some of these 
people I want to speak. I should not have known of 
them, however, if it had not been for a French lady, 
whom many, many American mothers have reason to 
love! I kissed her for those mothers and told her 
that after the war, when she comes over to America 
(which she has promised several hundred American 
soldiers to do), she will have to give up an entire year 
to taking dinner every single day with a different 
mother. 

This is what she is doing — she is supplementing 
the canteen work of the Y. M. C. A. by opening her 

291 



SMALL THINGS 

own house, offering her own "foyer^^ to our soldiers ! 
This isn't "organized relief" — it's just "good times." 
A pleasant sitting-room, where there is a piano, and 
Madame Iryure's own pretty, well-brought-up girls 
to pound out roaring tunes, or practice duets with 
our boys. There are excited, homelike squabbles 
over games in this salon — ^just the sort of thing, you 
know, that happens at home. And (just as they did 
at home) the boys run errands for Madame, and 
tease Georgette, and get their buttons sewed on, and 
are told to be sure and take some aspirin for that 
cold, and to stop smoking so many cigarettes, and 
for pity's sahel — or the French equivalent — to re-- 
member to wipe their boots, and not track the black, 
sticky mud from rue de Siam on Madame's clean 
floors ! No wonder they love her, these homesick men 
— literally "hundreds" of them. They give her their 
pictures, hanging them in a row in her salon, and 
labeling them, — impudent youngsters ! — *^ Madame 
lryure*s Rogues^ Gallery" They love her, and talk 
to her about their mothers, or their best girls, or 
their dogs; they show her the neckties they have 
bought; they consult her anxiously as to the things 
they want to buy to send home — and she has many 

292 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

times interfered, and saved American wives and 
mothers from dreadful imitation lace collars, or 
hideous "souvenir" handkerchiefs! She also writes 
endless letters to the United States, just to say, "I've 
seen your Tom, or Dick, or Harry — and he is tres 
bon, tres brave, tres gentil,^^ etc., etc. 

Yet, doing aU this for our soldiers, and visiting 
the French hospitals, and keeping her house clean 
and comfortable and charmingly refined, on a noisy, 
dirty, wicked old street in this port, Madame Iryure 
is yet able to go about with gentle, healing sympathy 
among the refugees who have been blown here by the 
Great Wind that is shaking the world. I am sure 1 
don't know where she finds the time ! 

Once she let me go with her. . . . 

There is a room just below the level of the street, 
— a very dirty street — and when the wind blows, dust 
and refuse come eddying down through the open 
doorway — for, to get a breath of air in hot weather, 
the door must be kept open; sometimes the wind 
brings a salty freshness that makes up a little for 
the dust. A refugee mother with three children 
lives in this cellar. She has put up a sort of lat- 
tice across one end of the room, and hung a quilt over 

£93 



SMALL THINGS 

it; so, you see, this makes two rooms (so she says), 
in which, more or less uncomfortably, four people 
may live, if they have to ; — especially if three of the 
four are little people. But there are more than four. 
There are six in this "appartement'^ ; another 
mother, who is only a girl, and her child. 

"jB/t, bien," said the mother of the three; "she has 
no one, this girl, Marie. And she has a baby. So 
she had to be here with me." 

"Her husband — he is in the army.f"' I said. 

Madame shook her head. "She has no husband. 
She is not married. No. She lived in my town, and 
when the Germans took it, four years ago, one of 
them, an officer, told her she was to live with him. 
So she lived with him. No, Madame, she was not of 
an immoralness. She was tres sage; tres serieuse. 
But had she refused to live with him — another would 
have taken her, who might have been, perhaps, less 
gentil than he. He — yes ; he was of a kindness. He 
did not ill-treat her. She had for him, even, after a 
while, an affection. The father of her child, Madame, 
you understand? I suppose it may be so. Me, I 
could not feel it. But she said he was not of a bru- 
talness. He was stationed in our town ; for two years 

294 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

he was there. Eh, hien; when the Allies began to 
shell us, we were told to leave ; so he said to her, ^GoT 
She had thought he had a fondness for her, being the 
mother of his child, and that he would send her back 
of the German lines, where she could wait for him. 
But he said 'GoT So she went — with me; bringing, 
of course, the child. She works here in a shop. But 
she is delicate, and cannot earn much. So, naturelle- 
Tnent, I continue to keep her with me; and I look 
after the child while she is at work." 

'^Naturellement :^^ Think of the significance of 
that word! And everybody says it when they do 
remarkable things, beginning with Madame Iryure, 
who finds it "natural" to take time from her effort 
to make both ends meet and educate her pretty 
Georgette, and sew buttons on American shirts, and 
teach American boys how to speak French — it seems 
a matter of course to her to take time to come, day 
after day, to the cellars and attics, in what our men 
call "the wickedest town on earth." 

But they say "naturellemenf^ about other things 
than kindness. . . . When I climbed up out of this 
particular cellar, I found a group of children play- 
ing on the sidewalk. 

295 



SMALL THINGS 

"I wish I could keep them clean," the mother said, 
wistfully; "mais c^est impossihler' 

They weren't so very dirty, considering, and they 
seemed perfectly happy, sitting on the curbstone, 
chattering like a lot of street sparrows. When I 
stopped to say "Bon jour, ma petite/' each one, with 
pretty and gracious friendliness, gave me a little, 
claw-like, grimy hand and said, Bon jour, Madame!'' 
— except one. He just stared at me. "Bon jour," 
I said, amused at his fat, rosy stolidity; and again 
he answered by an unsmiling stare out of round, 
china-blue eyes. It may sound absurd to say so, but 
there was something about that dull, unfriendly gaze 
that embarrassed me. "This little boy won't speak 
to me," I said in an aside to Madame. I wondered 
what I had done to arouse his baby antagonism — 
the dislike of a child or a dog is curiously morti- 
fying to an adult. "He doesn't like me!" I said, 
abashed, and wondering. 

Madame Iryure gave a little shrug. "NatureUe- 
ment" said she; "il est Venfant de VallemaTid" 

Of course one allows for coincidence; it may be 
that I had unconsciously offended the little group on 
the curbstone; but, if so, it was only the "infant of 

296 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

the German" who would not shake hands and forgive 
me. The German child, who had been taken into that 
poor, dark cellar, and fed and cared for with the 
three French children, — was the only one who refused 
to put his dirty paw into mine, — though I noticed 
that he accepted (silently) the ten centimes, for 
which the others had overflowed with pretty and ex- 
cited thanks. 

"NaturelleTnentr* said Madame again — this time 
as to the child's willingness to accept; and speaking 
racially, she was certainly correct. In their purpose 
of gain, the Germans have always "accepted," with- 
out thanks; now they "take," without permission. 
It is just the next step, this "taking," and it has 
made them the Robbers of the World. 

This is only a little, unimportant story of a dis- 
agreeable child- — but it is the sort of thing that is 
building up in our minds the startled consciousness 
that there is something inherently wrong with the 
German blood ; it adds its little weight to our deter- 
mination to "smash Germany" — the thing our men 
say, gleefully!, every day of their lives. I suppose 
this racial defect makes all sorts of things "natural" 
to the German mentality — the shelling hospital 

297 



SMALL THINGS 

trains, or roads crowded with refugees. . . . Here is 
a story about that: 

We were sitting, Madame Iryure and I, with an old 
daughter and an old mother, — ninety-four she was, 
this old mother ; and the daughter, a big, vigorous 
woman of, I fancy, sixty-five or sixty-six, watched 
her as if she were a baby. 

'^Elh est tres fatiguee,^^ the daughter explained; 
"she is not yet rested, though it is now two years — 
and she was only ninety-two, then. She walked, 
Madame, there was no other way, for we had to flee 
from the Germans. So she is tired, ma mere. Nat- 
urellement." 

This was not a complaint, just the statement that 
a woman of ninety-two might, under the circum- 
stances, be expected to be "tired." . . . Be- 
fore the flight began, for which no vehicle could be 
found, the old daughter telephoned to her brother- 
in-law in the next town: "What shall I do with our 
mother.?" she demanded frantically. "Start!" he 
said; "walk! and I will meet you with my motor!" 
"His motor was of a dilapidation," said the woman, 
"but it would go." He started. "We have never 
seen him since, Madame. We know not — my sister, 

298 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

his wife, knows not — what happened. He was killed 
on the way, no doubt. They were dropping bombs 
on the road — of course — as it was full of people! 
So, as there was no car to carry her, ma mere walked 
— much. And she is, therefore, fatiguee" 

As the daughter told this story, the ninety-four- 
year-old mother, her hands folded in her lap, her 
eyes bleared and red-rimmed, regarded us with 
sphinx-like calmness. I seemed to have no words of 
sympathy. After all, what words can one use, to 
say how one sympathizes with an old woman, totter- 
ing, gasping, stumbling along a hot, blinding-white 
road, over which a hostile airplane soared and 
swooped and dropped bombs on fleeing people — on 
an elderly gentleman, racing along in a battered old 
automobile to pick up his mother-in-law and carry 
her back to safety? How can one sum up that sort 
of thing .^^ As this story was told to me, the inad- 
equacy of words to describe the degeneracy of the 
German mind, and the glorious misery of the French 
Soul, came over me with a dazing sense of my 
own futility and helplessness. . . . What is the use 
of even writing about it.? Nobody can understand 
it, who hasn't felt it ; and if one has felt it, one does 

299 



SMALL THINGS 

not want to read about it! (However, I find myself 
trying to write about it, futile and inadequate as 
my words are!) 

The old daughter talked on and on, monotonously. 
"Would Madame," she said, *'care to visit some 
friends, who had also been driven from their homes ?" 
These friends were very poor, she explained; so, na- 
turally, she was helping them. We went, she and 
Madame Iryure and I, through queer, twisting, 
filthy streets, the sea wind making dust clouds around 
the corners. We found the friends, three women, 
and one monotonously crying baby, in a tenement of 
two rooms. They showed me the picture of the house 
from which they had run — run, to escape its bursting 
walls and burning roof and crashing timbers ! It had 
been a big, comfortable building, for they had been 
innkeepers, and were evidently well-to-do people. 

*'Mon mari," said the oldest of the three, "est 
mort, II est mort de chagrin et fatigue.^* His heart 
was not strong, she explained, "and his sorrow was 
such " 

She looked, this quiet, uncomplaining woman, like 
the Sistine Madonna grown old ; her dark hair, with 
here and there a gleaming silver thread in it, was 

300 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

parted over a serene white forehead, and her eyes, 
gently remote, seemed as if tear-washed into a 
strange, almost unearthly calmness. Very quietly 
she told me of their village, and of their fight, and 
— of her neighbor. Can I repeat, I wonder, that 
neighbor's story ? . . . Yes ; because we cannot know 
too precisely and explicitly just what we Americans 
are fighting over in France. . . . 

The neighbors, it appears, were a husband and a 
wife; and she was young. And there were seven 
German soldiers . . . and they tied the husband to 
the bedpost . . . The hideousness of that hour in 
the upper room of the neighbor's house was stated 
with laconic, uncomplaining composure. It was not 
until the last detail was given that the kind, elderly 
face suddenly quivered into tears. 

"They had broken into a shop, those Boches, and 
taken much jewelry; oh, not valuable things — ^just 
things of a cheapness. Imitation, Madame. And 
this jewelry they threw down beside her — she was un- 
conscious then. Oh, yes; she remained unconscious 
until six o'clock. And they threw the jewelry beside 
her — as if to say, ^She has been paid.'' Madame, the 
insult! — the insult!" . . . 

301 



SMALL THINGS 

She broke down and covered her face with her 
hands. It was the spiritual agony which brought 
those tears of rage; physical suffering had been en- 
dured with composure; death had been faced with 
calmness. But the insult! 

"It was only the body," Madame Iryure comforted 
her. The Madonna said, ^^Ou% oid." But the wound 
to the soul! . . . Again her face twitched and she 
covered it with her thin hands, while the tears 
dropped from between her fingers. Madame Iryure 
put her arms about her. 

"Mon amie! Mon amie!" she said. 

There seemed to be nothing else to say. . . . Yes ; 
we complain, or at least we used to complain, of heat 
and cold, and trolley cars, and janitors. But when 
there is a tornado, or a conflagration, or an earth- 
quake, there is really nothing to say. France is 
speechless. The Wind of German Hate has swept 
the green fields and left graves — graves everywhere! 
The earth has quaked under the tramp of their ar- 
mies, and treasure has been engulfed. The fire of 
their Lust has destroyed sheltering roofs of thou- 
sands of homes, and licked up hearths that were the 
symbols of family life. But after the Wind and the 



"THE REGAL SOUL" 

Earthquake and the Fire, there speaks in France the 
Still Small Voice of the Spirit, which says, "// is only 
the body." It speaks over in America, too, for we 
are saying to France, — "My friend, my friend !" 

It was the insult to the soul which so shook the 
fabric of this elderly woman's life; an insult to her 
neighbor's soul, you may say? But in France we 
are all neighbors! ... I find myself wondering 
whether we ever can be "neighbors" to Germany 
again? I don't see how it is possible in our time^ — 
or even in the time of that china-blue-eyed child of 
lust and shame, — the child who would not give me 
his Kttle hand, clenched so tightly over the centimes ! 
When one thinks of the German mentality, a wave 
of hatred rises in us, and under its bitter surge, we 
say a thousand bitter things. We say, some of us, 
*'a trade boycott!" "Starve the beast into half- 
human decency," we say. Then, in our calmer mo- 
ments we know that that is pure childishness. It is 
like tying the enemy's hands behind him, and then 
saying, "Put your hand in your pocket and pay us 
what you owe us !" 

Well ! it is hard to think straight in this storm of 
anger. Fortunately, little people like ourselves, 



SMALL THINGS 

— civilians doing their job in France, don't have to 
decide such great questions as boycotts and indem- 
nities. We are too small, and too angry, and our 
vision is too limited for such momentous decisions. 
And we are seeing red — some of us. It is only the 
French calmness, and patience, and balance that 
keep some of us from expressions of anger which 
would soil our lips, and pull us down to the German 
level. Personally, I try to keep Madame Iryure in 
my mind, and to say, over and over, "It is only the 
body of France that has been hurt. They cannot 
touch her Soul!" Her Soul, which does not com- 
plain; which endures, with quietness and confidence 
and courage; the Soul of France, which knows that 
Value cannot be summed up in money ; that power is 
not another word for Righteousness ; that lust is not 
Love ; — the Soul which knows all the things that Ger- 
many has forgotten ! 

One looks at France as she dashes from her eyes 
the blood from her wounded head — and strikes and 
strikes at the beast — that beast which is in all of us, 
but which in Germany has broken loose — and one 
says, exultantly: 

"Nothmg can compel the regal Soul!" 
304 



XII 

WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 
September, 1918 

OVER THERE in France last spring we were 
so certain of the Dawn that once in a while, 
as we sat in the darkness of midnight, we 
amused ourselves by talking of what would happen 
when the Day should break and the German Shadow 
be lifted forever from the world. . . . "What is go- 
ing to happen, after the Germans have been beaten ?'* 
we said to each other. 

"We'll have a new world," an American officer 
said. And a Y. M. C. A. man added, "This little old 
earth will be a cleaner place to live in, after we've 
licked Germany out of her boots, and burned up all 
her medieval militaristic rubbish." 

Which was another way of saying that all Human- 
ity would be purified and saved by the cleansing fire 
of War. But there wasn't any doubt in our minds 
that Germany, who betrayed humanity to the flames, 

305 



SMALL THINGS 

would herself be pretty thoroughly consumed in the 
conflagration. By the light of those flames, which 
lapped up cathedrals that were the treasures of the 
world, and thatched roofs which sheltered the treas- 
ures of Love — lapped up the playthings of Belgian 
babies, and bird cages in which blackbirds used to 
whistle in the sunshine — by the light of those flames 
we read the meaning of Materialism. For it is Ma- 
terialism which has brought Germany to her down- 
fall! And, naturally, the civilized peoples, anxious 
to banish such materialism from the earth by "lick- 
ing Germany out of her boots," are ready to see a 
few of their own grimy ideas licked out of existence, 
too! When that has been done, of course, as the 
Y. M. C. A. man said, the world will be a cleaner 
place to live in. It will be lighted, not by incendiary 
fires, but by the torch of an Idealism which, among 
other things, has sent two million of our men across 
the ocean to help in the licking! 

So that was the way we talked, we Americans, 
cheering each other with the assertion that future 
good was to come out of all the present evil. But 
we generally ended, both soldiers and civilians, by 
saying that the man who started the Fire, the man 

306 



WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

wKo betrayed us, had "something coming to him." 
What should the "something" be? To discuss his 
punishment in a chilly abri was a harmless amuse- 
ment, and served to while away the dull hours be- 
tween, say, 11 P.M. and 2 or 3 A.M. For that was 
when quite frequently some of us sat in a certain 
hospitable cellar on the left bank of the Seine. . , . 
The air raids had hardly left us a quiet night for 
five weeks — and the cellar was too uncomfortable for 
sleep; so nothing was more natural than to consider 
what we would do to the Kaiser to get even with him 
for the loss of beauty sleep (which is supposed to 
come before twelve o'clock). For, while waiting for 
a probable raid, nobody settled down in bed before 
11 :45 at the earliest. It was generally somewhere 
between 11:15. and 11:45 that, high up in the sky, 
and from all quarters of the heavens at once, the 
horrid, squealing laugh of the siren would be heard. 
Instantly, as it shattered the star-lit darkness of 
Paris, the electric light in our apartment house went 
out, and we waited, yawning, to know whether the 
enemy had gotten through our lines. If he had, we 
heard in about ten minutes the sudden roar and 
crash of defending air guns. The sound is like 

307 



SMALL THINGS 

sharp, banging thunder, pierced at intervals by tre- 
mendous, houseshaking explosions, which splintered 
the air with such frightful concussions, that they 
sometimes made our ears hurt us. When this hap- 
pened, we sleepy people, who had been sitting about 
waiting for this tiresome interruption, would get up 
and say, resignedly, "Well, I suppose we must go 
down to the cellar?" 

The first night this happened, almost as the lights 
went out, there came a hurrying rush of footsteps 
along the hall, a quick knock at my door, then 
Marie's white face, and wide, dark, terrified eyes : 

Madame! Les Bodies! Est-ce que Madarne descend 
a la caveV 

"Non, Marie" 

*'Nonf Madame, desceridez! iDescendez!" Even 
as she spoke we heard the scuttle of her flying feet, 
far down the hall, the tap! tap! at each door, and 
the warning cry, "La cave! La cave!" 

A minute later came the authoritative voice of the 
gallant and charming Frenchwoman who was the 
head of the house: "The morale of the household, 
Madame, makes it a necessity that all shall obey the 
rules of the Government, to descend to the cellar," 



WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

she said calmly. So, of course, we said meekly that 
we would "descend." By the tiny spark of a flash- 
light, and stumbling over boots ranged outside of 
closed doors (our boots were still blacked, after a 
fashion), I felt my way through the inky darkness 
of the hall toward the three flights of stairs by which 
we were to reach the bowels of the earth. . . , 

I remember that in those moments of dark silence 
while people were rushing downstairs, I noticed a 
hurrying shape in blue pajamas flitting past me, and 
recognized a French officer, invalided home, who was 
staying in our pension because he no longer had a 
home to which to go. His wife, a refugee from north- 
em France, had fled to Paris and found shelter here, 
so he had joined her — and they were so happy to be 
together — ruined and exhausted, with no future ex- 
cept Love. I had a glimpse of his face — calm, tragic, 
white — bending over a little bundle he held in his 
arms; it was his baby, born in all the thundering 
alarms of the evacuation of his town. The little 
thing, wrapped in a hurriedly * caught-up blanket, 
looked at me in the flash of my electric light, with 
eyes as calm as his. Then the darkness swallowed 
father and child. . . . 

309 



SMALL THINGS 

The cellar of this old house wandered off into space 
like endless catacombs; vault opening into vault, 
gleaming wet walls broken by arch after arch, cor- 
ridors stretching back into obscurity. In the middle 
of the labyrinth of passages and cellars our hostess 
had laid down a rug, and built up a sort of table, and 
provided a few seats (mostly empty boxes standing 
on end). A lamp burned steadily on the table, and 
sometimes there were even papers about for anybody 
wakeful enough to read. It may sound a little forced 
to suggest being "sleepy" in an air raid; but the 
truth is, you got used to the raids just as you got 
used to Big Bertha, after she had dropped death ajl 
around you for weeks. Once she dropped a shell in 
the Garden of the Tuileries two or three hundred 
feet behind the A. A. S. ; and we all jumped, and said, 
''Gra-cious !" and then we walked on, and did a little 
shopping in the Rue de Rivoli. Yet "sleepiness" 
under bombardment was queer, I admit; it was aU 
queer over there! And as queer as anything else 
was the matter-of-fact way people took the abso- 
lutely new experience of being in constant danger. 
One charming gentleman confessed to having cussed 
a little, because the jar of a terrific explosion, 

310 



WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

knocked his talcum powder off the shelf in his bath- 
room, when he was shaving, and his "waistcoat 
looked as if flour had been sprinkled all over it!" 
And a wortian said to me, with a shrug: "Yesterday 
the shells came. every twenty minutes ; they were reg- 
ular, like labor pains." (I wondered if she thought 
of all the glory that the travail of the world was 
bringing to birth!) Once, however, under this "reg- 
ular" shelHng, her calmness had been shaken : "I had 
all the children in my room," she said, "because it is 
of such smallness that I 30uld keep them warm by 
just a little fire in the fireplace. And I was making 
toast, for Mimi was sick, and cried for pai/n grille; 
and I buttered it — Oh, yes, I had bought a little but- 
ter, Madame, just for Mimi! And I put the toast 
down in front of the grate to keep warm : and then — 
a shell fell in the next block, and the secousse upset 
Mimi's toast into the ashes — and all that butter so 
expensive was lost ! And Mimi wept," she ended sim- 
ply. Think of being so used to being bombarded that 
Mimi's toast was what worried you I 

On this particular night, in the cellar, when the 
fate of the Kaiser was discussed, the sound of the 
dropping bombs was muffled by the thick walls, and 

311 



SMALL THINGS 

there was no buttered toast to fall into the fire, be- 
cause there was no fire (and no butter, either!). I 
think it would have amused us to make toast while 
we waited until the strange, mad people up in the 
air got tired of their vicious play, or their ammuni- 
tion gave out, or our machine guns winged them. But 
as we could not make toast, we just waited until, for 
one reason or another, the raid ended, and the berl- 
oqtie ("All clear!") sounded, and we could creep 
out, a little stiffly (for soap boxes are not over- 
comfortable), and climb upstairs again. 

Until that welcome sound came, however, there was 
nothing to do but crouch about in overcoats and jac- 
kets, and yawn, and look at each other, each of us 
wondering if he or she looked as haggard as the 
other people did. And, as yo^i can understand, it 
was natural, in this long hour and a half (or so), to 
amuse ourselves by saying what we thought ought to 
be done to the Kaiser for giving us all this trouble 
and sleeplessness. 

What punishment will fit the crime of this individ- 
ual Judas — who is the embodiment of the Judas na- 
tion? The crime itself we did not discuss, it was an 
old story. The whole civilized world knows it, and 



WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

abhors it. There has been no such crime since man- 
kind began to stand on its hind legs. The fact that 
the criminal, like the small boy in America, "didn't 
go for to do it," that even his insanely egotistical im- 
agination could not have conceived such horrors as 
have been brought upon humanity — the fact that the 
German Emperor is, briefly (as a Frenchman said), 
only the poor Jackass of Time who has kicked down 
some of the bulwarks of Civilization — all these miti- 
gating statements do not lessen this other fact, that 
he must be punished. . . . 

There was a silent Englishman and a talkative 
Englishman in the little group that debated this 
question, sitting on the packing boxes and watching 
the lamplight gleaming on the wet walls and casting 
strange shadows on the vaulted ceilings. And there 
were three or four Americans, men and women, and 
a pretty girl; and the French soldier with his baby 
rolled up in a blanket, and his handsome red-headed 
wife, whose high heels were as silly as any of those 
worn by American girls — and they all had ideas on 
the subject. 

After everything is said and done and suffered, 
and the rocking world is steady again, what are 

813 



SlilALL THINGS 

those of us who are left^ — broken and scarred as we 
shall be — what are we going to do to the fool who 
brought disaster upon us? ("And upon his own 
country, too, thank the Lord!" said the talkative 
Englishman. ) 

"Perhaps they'll banish him?" one of the evacuees 
said. 

"Banishment?" said an American. "Shucks! 
Banishment is too dead easy for him." 

"It is not agreeable," said the evacuee, dryly. "I 
remember myself, monsieur, of two people of the 
town next to me, an old husband and wife exiled — 
banished — driven out into the fields; very old they 
were ; yes, of great age. And they lived in the fields 
for days. They were without shelter ; they had made 
coverings for themselves from clothing they found 
on the dead on the battleground; there was blood 
on the clothing — stiff, black blood; and it was of a 
smell very dreadful. They had no words to speak of 
their suffering, these vieuw. They stood before me, 
in my garden; the old husband opened his lips, but 
no sound came; his hands were of purpleness with 
cold; he tied his long white beard into knots — one 
knot — and then a word, 'Madamer and he untied 

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WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

the knot; *mfl femme.' And he tied another knot. 
His hands bled with the cracks of the cold. 'Elle a 
faim,^ he said; and he untied the knot. He could 
speak no more. She, looking at him, wept — ^wept — 
wept ; but very quietly, without sound. A few days 
later she died of the cold and misery of the fields. 
And when she was dying, he sat beside her, and tied 
knots in his beard, and said nothing — nothing. Ban- 
ishment is of great misery, monsieur. It is not little. 
Not, as you say, 'Shooks.' " 

"He can have St. Helena," said the silent Eng- 
lishman; "it would be rather neat to send him to 
St. Helena." 

But there was an outcry at that. What! Let 
the ape 'set foot where the lion has trod? Never ! 

"Not on 5''our life," said the American. "I vote 
for imprisonment for life in an underground dungeon 
— say a cellar on the left bank of the Seine," he 
ended, shivering. 

Then a Frenchwoman spoke, between shut teeth; 
"Imprisonment.'^ Oiii! Out! My brother died in 
one of their unclean prisons, mange by lice — de- 
voured. His wounds being without care, these crea- 
tures — " I spare you her description. I wanted 
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SMALL THINGS 

to put my hands over my ears to shut out the 
laconic horror of her naked words. No wonder the 
passion for retahation made her feel that the man 
who permitted such things should also rot, also be 
'^mange," in an unclean prison! 

But here a sleepy American woke up to say, 
drowsily: "I would have him spanked, publicly. 
Only by being made ridiculous can he be made harm- 
less. He'll be a historical figure if we kill him, as I 
should enjoy doing. The next thing w'ould be that he 
would get into the prayerbook as a 'blessed martyr,' 
like your* King CJharles. Imprisonment would 
only make him a center of unrest, a focus of con- 
spiracy, as long as he lived. He would be a menace 
to the peace of the world in the deepest dungeon you 
could find. In fact, the deeper and dirtier it was, 
the more dangerous he would be, for the Allies, being 
civilized peoples, could not degrade themselves by 
imitating his cruelty. And there would be pacifists 
who would scream about the 'creatures,' and say they 
made him 'uncomfortable ;' and they would send him 
flowers! Yes, Madame; your lovely sex does that 
sort of thing ! Beside, somebody^d rescue him ; then 

816 



WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

we'd have the whole business over again ! Spank him, 
in the Place de la Concorde, and set him free." 

"You're right," the other American admitted ; "I 
guess we'll shoot him, as he shot Nurse Cavell." 

But the talkative Englisliman shook his head. 
"No; shooting is for spies who, whatever else they 
may be, are brave and intelligent men. This person 
is neither brave nor intelligent. Shooting is too 
good for him." 

"Hang him as high as Haman !" a lady suggested. 

"And give him the chance to work up rotten 
heroics for the benefit of spectators?" her husband 
said. "No ; hanging is too good for him." 

"Boil him in oil !" said an American, pounding the 
table with both fists. 

"I," said the pretty American girl viciously, "I 
would drop a bomb on him!" 

But the Y. M. C. A. man frowned. "Bomb him.? 
Let me tell you a bombing story which a Tommy 
told me. He said he had been detailed to carry some 
papers to the commander of another company. It 
was Sunday, he said ; a lovely day ! He was to walk 
through an old beech wood, and across ripe wheat 
fields, where there were lots of scarlet poppies. The 

317 



SMALL THINGS 

Boche guns were quiet, for a wonder, though there 
was a plane sliding round up in the air, but there 
was nothing doing, apparently. The sky was so blue 
and warm, he said, with big, still domes of shining 
white clouds on the horizon, that it made him think 
of one of those German posters we used to buy. Do 
you remember .P" 

Yes ; we remembered. There actually was a time 
when we bought "Made in Germany" things! It is 
hard to believe there ever were such days. 

"They won't come again, in our time," said the 
American ; "no more 'Made in Germany' in ours ! 
I — ^" A roar outside drowned the rest of the sen- 
tence. 

''That was made in Germany," said the Y. M. 
C. A. man ; and went on with the Tommy's story : 

"He said that everything was perfectly still and 
beautiful ; and right along through the yellow wheat 
and the poppies came a little girl in a black apron. 
About five, he thought she was. The prettiest thing! 
— ^brown eyes and curly hair; and she had a Teddy 
Bear under one arm, and she was carrying a big 
blue jug of milk. It slopped over a little, and she 
looked terribly anxious. He said she was a peach — 

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WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

but he had to laugh at the Teddy Bear squeezed un- 
der her arm, and the slopping milk. Somehow, she fit- 
ted into the blue sky and the white clouds, and the 
poppies in the wheat; and he was just going up to 
her, to carry her milk for her — he wanted to kiss her, 
he said; for somehow she, and the fields and the sky 
and everything, made him believe that God was 
somewhere in this hell of a world after all. (He 
has kids of his own.) He was chuckling to himself 
with happiness, and then .... that plane . . . • 
dropped a bomb .... right on her." 

One could hear, there in the cellar, the sharp 
indrawn breath of his hearers. . . . 

Nobody spoke. 

"He said he took the — the Teddy Bear, back to 
her mother." 

The pretty American, who had suggested bomb- 
ing as a punishment, put her face down on her 
father's knee. ; 

"Well," said the Y. M. C. A. man, "I asked him a 
fool question. I said, 'What did you do.?' He told 
me he just lifted his arms, and clenched his fists and 
looked up at the sky, and swore — and swore — and 
swore! — ^like a blue streak, for five solid minut§§, 

319 



SMALL THINGS 

Then he picked up . . . the Teddy Bear. As for 
the swearing," said the Y. M. C. A. man, "I came in 
on the chorus with both feet! So that's why I 
say, when it comes to bombing Wilham as punish- 
ment — it isn't fitting that he should have what that 
French baby had." 

The American girl agreed, in a very small voice 
"No— no." 

"There are others who are also personally re- 
sponsible," some one said. "There is the soldier who 
dropped the bomb; there is the man who manufac- 
tured the bomb; there is the officer who ordered the 
throwing of the bomb; there is the Government who 
authorized the bomb- throwing. The Emperor just 
pressed the button and started the dirty work." 

"We ought to indict the whole German nation," 
said the silent Englishman. 

"Just so," said the American; "and we will! The 
Germans will hear the indictment when they come 
up against a trade boycott. But as we can't, un- 
fortunately, after indicting them, and finding them 
guilty, wipe them all off of the face of the earth, 
we have just got to punish their embodiment — the 

320 



WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

Emperor William. Bombs, I admit, won't do; nor 
hanging, nor shooting, nor boiling in oil." 

"Well, then, what in thunder — " some one began; 
but the silent Englishman, who had only opened his 
lips twice during this idle talk, suddenly smiled. 

"You are all proposing to satisfy our personal 
animosity at the head bandit, ladies and gentlemen. 
There is a far more important consideration: I 
mean the preservation of civilization. His punishment 
must preserve that. We won't preserve it either by 
vengeance or leniency. The sentimentality of 
'Mercy' is as dangerous to civilization as would be 
retaliation for our own sufferings. Nor can we pre- 
serve it by trying to avenge those who have died for 
us. Either revenge or forbearance would jeopardize 
our own humanness. Hence," he said, smiling at the 
American girl, "although it won't do to let him go 
unpunished, neither will it do to torture his soul with 
public humiliation, though I admit that to spank 
him, and make him free and ridiculous, might ensure 
his harmlessness. Nor must we torture his flesh with 
vermin. Yet he and his gang must suffer. What? 
The legal penalty of their crimes! Nothing more. 
And nothing less. They must be indicted, tried, con- 

321 



SMALL THINGS 

victed, sentenced; all with the same formality and 
fairness -which we would extend to any other pick- 
pockets or assassins. . . ." He paused and fumbled 
in his pocket for a piece of paper. 

"I saw a list of some of the crimes of the crim- 
inals," he said, "and I copied it." He stuck his 
monacle in his eye and read : 

"Von Hindenhurg — is alleged to have ordered 
that bread which had been found soaked in paraffin 
should be given as food to Russian prisoners." 

"Von Mackensen — is alleged to have ordered about 
one thousand Rumanian children from ten to sev- 
enteen years of age to be shot, on the ground that 
they had conspired against him." 

"Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria — is alleged to have 
caused thirty-one girls to be carried off and placed 
at the disposal of his officers." 

"Blegen — is alleged to be responsible for the de- 
struction of Dinant, and the massacre of 34 old 
men, 71 women, and 17 children under nine years 
of age." 

"Prince Eitel Frederick — is alleged to have stolen 
a lady's wardrobe from a chateau near Liege. Stole 
several clocks. And so on . . . 

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WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

"These," said the Enghshman, putting the list 
back in his pocket, "these are the crimes charged 
against the small fry, which they must be given the 
chance to disprove. The crimes charged against 
the head bandit we needn't rehearse — they include 
the murder of your brave brother, mademoiselle, and 
of the old woman who ate the frozen turnips, and — 
and of that baby with the Teddy Bear. But he, 
too, the head bandit, must be given the chance to dis- 
prove these charges." He paused here and laughed. 
(I wish the Kaiser could have heard that laugh.) 
"For such crimes, he shall, by due process of law, be 
tried, and if convicted, sentenced." He paused 
again. Then, in a gentle and terrible voice, he said, 
"And, by God ! the sentence shall be executed." 

By some strange impulse, as he said these words, 
the four men there in the cellar, suddenly, together, 
raised their right hands. "Ameriy'^ they said. 

It was curious how the Englishman's words 
changed the whole atmosphere of the discussion; I 
don't mean merely that it stopped the flippancy ; it 
did more than that — ^it lifted us above our personal 
pain and anger. The word Lam — serene, inevitable, 
majestic — ^wiped the triviality of revenge out of 

323 



SMALL THINGS 

our minds and left in its place, Justice, The crimin- 
als must be punished. Why ? Not because the sister 
would have some individual German eaten — mange — 
as her brother was ; not because the mother, kissing 
the dripping Teddy Bear, would like to see German 
brains spattering the poppies ; not because the poor 
husband, tying knots in his white beard, would be 
glad to know that the instigator of his old wife's suf- 
fering was starving on raw turnips ! For no one of 
these personal impulses of retaliation must be Arch- 
Criminal and his band be sentenced, and the sentence 
"executed.'' It must be done, because, ^Ho fail to 
punish crime, when the power to do so exists, is not 
merely to condone it; it is to make it cease to he a 
crime, and become a precedent. ^^ If the Allies, for 
any reason whatever — call it politics or pacifism or 
what you will — if the Allies do not punish, according 
to law, they will blot the word Law out of human 
speech. 

"But what," some one said, meekly, "will be the 
punishment.'^ Death .^" 

The Englishman made a careless gesture. "Oh, 
as to that, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. But 
whatever, in Law, is the punishment for inciting to 



WE DECIDE THE KAISER'S FATE 

crime, that will be administered to the German Em- 
peror. I rather fancy it will be death. Whatever, 
in law, is the punishment for executing illegal acts 
ordered by another, that will be inflicted upon the 
men who executed Nurse Cavell and Captain Fryatt ; 
upon the man who sank the 'Lusitania' ; upon — Oh, 
well, I can't go through the whole list," he ended. . . . 
Well, the Head Bandit and his gang haven't been 
punished — yet ; we have still to catch our hare. But 
we know that we are going to catch him, and that the 
time of his punishment is coming nearer and nearer, 
and we know that no sacrifice has been too great 
if it wipes off the earth — not the deluded, enslaved 
German people, who, with their own bodies, their 
own unspeakable miseries of endurance, have propped 
up the HohenzoUern dynasty; or not even the evil 
Fool who is the head of the dynasty, and who set 
the world on fire, and is to be punished for it — but 
no sacrifice can be too great if it wipes out of 
the Human Mind the dynastic idea — ^Autocracy — 
and puts in its place our own Idea — Justice. Yes, 
we free people — ^English, French, Americans — we 
who sat in cellars in a rocking, magnificent Paris, 
and all the free people of our nations who stacked 

325 



SMALL THINGS 

up their Loans as breastworks for the men in the 
trenches, we know that there is no price too high to 
pay for victory! There is nothing (except honor) 
that we and our allies will not sacrifice to banish 
from the face of the earth the malign and venomous 
spirit which drove the old husband and wife into 
February fields to eat frozen turnips and cover them- 
selves with the stained and sodden uniforms of dead 
soldiers, drove them out to die in banishment from 
the comfortable chimney corner of some wrecked and 
pillaged farmhouse; the spirit of cruelty which let 
the soldier die of his rotting, untended wounds ; the 
spirit of Hell which spilt the baby's milk, and 
splashed the wheat and the poppies with her blood ! 
But the extermination of this evil Spirit must, 
for our own safety, be done by the Spirit of Eternal 
Righteousness — which we call Justice. 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, 
Such boastings as the Gentiles use. 
Or lesser breeds without the Law, 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet. 
Lest we forget — lest we forget. 

(i) 



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